Fallout Endgame
by Koopastasauce
Summary: A threat may loom for certain factions in the wasteland, as an old world artificial intelligence is released by the Enclave. Now walking the wastes, the pre-war android sizes up the various groups and settlements left behind by the great war, all while it moves ahead with a plan for a nation-wide purification program. Is it the work of a hero, or is this just another monster?
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

 **A girl to die for.**

The blasted lands of Chicago made the burnt out buildings of the little town seem like a land of dwarves and tiny architects. Why the Enclave had chosen to send an entire platoon to this little berg, Commander Ed Dennis could never have guessed. To him, and to most of the other soldiers the whole thing seemed like a waste of time. Although the city did have many standing structures, it was a dead place. Like the rest of the midwest and east coast of the old world, the soil was gray, cracked, and without any lush green growing from it. It seemed that there had been no humans that had survived the initial bombs in this area, this area once known as Iowa.

The only survivors of the great war of the once agricultural heavy state were the brahmin and the odd dogs that wandered the once bustling streets of the little hick town, neither were good for their meat, nor for their company. The scruffy red headed twenty something named Dennis had on occasion taken shots at the dogs, and had even bagged a couple to fight off the boredom that had begun to take hold in the passing days. The last bit of action that he had seen was when they had come across a traveling band of merchants. The idiots that had dared to defy the orders of the President of the United States. Even that little skirmish provided little excitement for him. Dennis sighed out as the sky drew steadily darker with the setting sun, and put his helmet back onto his armor.

"Damn science team better find something good here." Said Dennis to another soldier. The other soldier simply nodded and adjusted his tesla armor. The big bulky armor was a life saver in the wasteland of the old world, but it was the least comfortable thing anyone could be made to wear. The sun started to disappear behind one last remaining tall building. Once it had been the home of many offices and businesses, a strange juxtaposition to the fields of corn and other grains not but ten miles out from the city. Now it housed old bones, and the fields that had once waved in the winds outside of this little city only housed dried out husks. Maybe a ghoul or two still hid out in the large building's basement, or maybe in the ancient sewer systems beneath the ruined streets, who was to say? Dennis's thoughts were interrupted by the sudden activation of his internal helmet communications radio.

"-shington avenue!-" Came the buzzing voice over Dennis' internal helmet radio. The soldiers all stood to attention and waited for orders from the science team. The science leader, a tall and severe mannered man named William Hotchkiss, radioed back to the man on the other end.

"Say again?" Asked Hotchkiss, as he adjusted the bandwidth on the radio. There was a loud buzzing and then the excited voice of the other scientist again.

"Hotchkiss! We found it! It's under the street! Washinton avenue! It's real! Holy shit- it's really real!" Came the voice. More excited voices could be heard, in celebration and jovial moods. Hotchkiss motioned for the soldiers to get ready to move out.

"Okay! We can get there in a few minutes with the bird. Have you been able to record everything on camera?" Said Hotchkiss back, trying very hard to conceal his own excitement. The buzzing sound returned to the radio.

"Yeah! We're waiting on you chief, get over here!" Said the voice. Hotchkiss began to gather his things and move towards the vertibird, with Dennis and the six other soldiers in tow. Dennis rolled his eyes, unseen of course under his helmet. These bookworms were always excited about trivial electronics. The soldiers boarded the vertibird and quickly lifted off the ground. The pilot turned to Dennis in his seat and pointed down at the base camp.

"Looks like we can finally say goodbye to that pile of trash." He said. Dennis nodded and smiled. Their camp had been set up on the ruins of what had been a landfill at one time. The landfill had grown so large that it had actually been affectionately deemed 'Mount Trashmore' by the citizens of the old world. Now it was bleak and showed little visible difference to the city across the poisoned river that still flowed to the Mississippi delta. He would be genuinely happy to leave that site for good, it still stank of garbage, even 200 years after the nuclear holocaust that had claimed the city that had once surrounded it. It was fitting that the huge mountain of garbage should be the last real remaining manmade structure that these old world farmers and rednecks left behind for future generations.

"Good riddance." Said Dennis back to him, through his radio. The ride to Washington avenue was quiet and short. The ruins of the city below flew by underneath them, still and silent. The night had taken the world once more, and unlike the bustling city of Chicago, or the busy streets of the Commonwealth, the old burnt out homes and streets seemed almost peaceful. The vertibird landed without incident in the empty lot of what had been a few residences long ago. One by one the soldiers piled out, with the lead scientist Hotchkiss bringing up the rear. He was typing on his tablet and hurriedly checking the area.

"This doesn't make any sense. Rockwell aerospace is on the northern side of this city... and the military complex is farther south. This is a residential area only!" He said, as he scanned the area. Dennis looked around too. The house in question seemed very much intact still, save for the roof and the windows. It still stood with it's porch and awning in good shape, and a swinging bench still clung to the awning by one chain. The pilot of the vertibird made a few adjustments to his tablet as well, and the doors of the vertibird secured themselves.

"What's the problem doc?" Asked the pilot of the vertibird. Hotchkiss turned on his heels towards the soldiers.

"This just isn't where we would find a vault. There shouldn't be anything here at all." He said sounding a little absent. Two excited scientists came running out from behind the mostly standing house on the tiny hill. The younger of the two, obviously the man from the radio went to greet the soldiers and Hotchkiss.

"Sir! You won't believe it! You just won't believe it!" Said the out of breath man.

"Calm yourself Malloy! Get a grip and report your findings!" Barked out Hotchkiss. Malloy, the excited scientist stood at attention and recomposed himself.

"I'm sorry sir." He said. "Sir, our initial findings are that the technology used in this vault is independent from Vault-tec!" Said Malloy. Hotchkiss raised an eyebrow.

"Independent? Do you mean that it's been built by a rival company?" Asked Hotchkiss. Malloy shook his head.

"No Sir. This vault was constructed by person or persons hitherto unknown- it looks like there's still power to it, and it even has what looks to be working environmental controls!" Said Malloy. Then he swallowed hard. "Sir, there is a communication system set up right at the entrance, it looks like we can communicate with whoever is inside." He said. Dennis perked up.

"Survivors?" He asked, hoping above all hope that they would be hostile. Some action would be nice. Malloy turned to Dennis.

"With the power still going strong, and the environment inside looking stable, it's a definite possibility. It's a small vault though, maybe big enough for only 30 people?" Answered Malloy. "It's been centuries, there's no telling what the dwellers will do if we go in there unanounced." He said.

"Dennis, you're with me." Ordered Hotchkiss as he began to make his way towards the old house. Dennis gave a singular nod and escorted the scientist to the back of the ruined house. The back wall had given way, revealing a typical kitchen and the entrance to a basement stairway. The two men made their way down the steps and joined a small group of four other men, all of whom were frantically typing on tablets and talking amongst themselves. At the back of the basement, a large drop off into more stairs led downward. The industrial and once hidden stairs were different from anything Hotchkiss had ever seen, they were almost pristine in their condition, and they were back lit from the power source of the vault. "My God..." Said Hotchkiss, as he examined the vault entrance.

"I'll take point, Sir, if you don't mind." Said Dennis, through his helmet. Hotchkiss motioned him forward, and Dennis went down the stairs. Each stair lit up even more with every footfall, and at the bottom of the stairs was one more scientist, standing in awe at the door in front of him. Dennis looked upward at the advanced set up, and he too found himself in a wondrous gaze at the technology before him. This looked even more advanced than the things he had seen as a child in the Commonwealth, or even in the holotapes of the world in the days before the war. Why would such things be buried among the cornfields of this nothing state?

"Incredible." Said Hotchkiss, as he moved past Dennis. He touched the vault door with his gloved hand and withdrew it quickly. "It's vibrating." He noted. The other scientist at the vault door nodded.

"There's definetely power to the door." He said. Hotchkiss sniffed the air in the room and then turned around to find the lit up door controls. He marveled at the touch screen display on the controls. "We've never seen any working tech like that." Said the scientist, as he joined Hotchkiss.

"So it's true... not just in the Commonwealth, but here too. Microchip technology... the future that could have been..." Said Hotchkiss trailing off. He cleared his throat and turned to the other man. "Have you opened up any communication yet?" He demanded. The man shook his head.

"We've been waiting for your command-" Said the man. Hotchkiss turned away from the man, rather dismissively, and placed his gloved hand on the controls. Nothing happened. Hotchkiss huffed out and brought his tablet up to the control screen and went to record the images, when suddenly a blue light emanated from the control panel's screen and scanned both Hotchkiss and his tablet. He stepped back in surprise, and a tone sounded from the panel. Immediately, the control lit up and the vault door began to hum loudly. Readouts went scrolling across the control screen, and Hotchkiss took out his camera to begin recording the texts.

"It's reading the outside atmosphere! Levels of radiation... moisture... air content! Everything!" Said Hotchkiss, very excitedly. The scans stopped and then a quick flash lit the room. "Oh.." Said Hotchkiss. The readout scrolled across. The last bit of text to scroll had read 'Human'. The massive vault door sounded a strange tone, and then it too lit up. Dennis raised his plasma rifle at the door and stepped in front of the scientists. The door came forward and then started to move into it's open position.

"Did you open that, Sir?" He asked.

"It was an automatic function!" Said Hotchkiss. Dennis pressed his hand against his helmet to radio the other soldiers.

"We may have trouble!" Said Dennis. The radio buzzed back with a reply, and Dennis turned his attention back to the door. It completed it's loud opening, just as the other six soldiers joined the rest of them at the vault entrance. The commander made some hand movements, and Dennis and another soldier went inside, guns drawn and at the ready.

"Touch nothing!" Hissed out Hotchkiss. He followed along with the soldiers and kept recording the event on his holotape camera. The inside of the entrance was not like that of a Vault-tec vault at all. There were plants and thick cushioned walls at the back of the entrance, and what looked to be a large monitor. On the monitor, Hotchkiss could see themselves being watched in real time. The next large door hissed open before Dennis could even get near it, and the vault hallway ahead of him lit up. It was clean, untouched. "Perfectly preserved!" Said Hotchkiss under his breath.

"This tech will set us years ahead! Congratulations Hotchkiss!" Said one of the scientists who had also ventured into the vault. Hotchkiss smiled in appreciation. The Enclave would be able to use this undiscovered technology, and destroy any other force that stood in there way. The dawn of the new era was upon them. He traveled down the automatically illuminating hallway with the soldiers and took in the reality of the situation. All of the power nodes were behind pristine walls, and there were no visible power conduits. The vault was almost alien... almost unreal.

"Jesus!" Yelled out one of the soldiers, as he backed up into the group. In the room in front of them lay a large lush garden, full of trees and running water. The entire atrium was one big terrarium, complete with a gardener. The gardener, a tall white, slender droid of some unknown origin, went about it's business, completely ignoring the soldiers and scientists. The soldiers moved in cautiously, barrels poised at the tall droid. It continued it's watering of the garden, and then quickly turned to look at the soldiers. They all stood staring back at the machine, ready to open fire.

"Designation." Said the machine. Hotchkiss raised a hand to the soldiers and stepped forward.

"Explain." Demanded Hotchkiss. Dennis kept his gun trained on the machine. The tall white faceless stick man turned to face Hotchkiss.

"Designation." It repeated. "Designation, Green Thumb 2." Said the android, as it pointed to itself. Hotchkiss nodded.

"We are the United States army, here by the order of Colonel James Moore!" Said Hotchkiss, in an unwaivering tone. The android seemed to gesture a nod.

"Good evening the United States army, here by the order of Colonel James Moore." It said. "How can I help you?" It asked, in a polite voice. Some of the soldiers scoffed out and lowered their weapons, but Dennis stayed at attention. He never trusted robots, never.

"We are here to survey this facility and rescue any survivors. We've come to bring them all home." Said Hotchkiss. Of course that was never the intent, but it did sound better than the truth. "Can you point us to the overseer of the vault?" He asked. The android pointed to a large door at the left side of the room.

"Control can be found there." It said. Then it returned to it's tasks, seemingly done with interaction. Hotchkiss began to take photos of the garden and the robot. He spotted gravestones at the back of the garden, twenty-eight of them to be precise. He took note of it and continued onwards.

"Sir, I recommend that we wait for orders from the colonel." Said Commander Dennis. Hotchkiss turned to him.

"And risk a bunch of primitives raiding this place while we're waiting? Ridiculous!" He said, pushing onward. "We've only scratched the surface of this vault! Imagine the reactor this place must run on- we could harvest a new power system from it alone!" He said, as he made his way towards the control. The soldiers quickly followed him and took point again. They made their way to the large door and it hissed open as they approached. Hotchkiss looked inside the room and gasped.

Inside the room were roughly three dozen pods, sized for one to two people each, arranged in a circle around a massive computer tower. The walls too, were of some computational devices, all plugged in and running with the main tower at the center. Serene glowing lights from above and beneath lit the room, and a number of blinking lights seemed to form a path to the computer tower. The tower must have stood more than two stories tall, and it hummed with electricity. Hotchkiss took more photos and smiled. He motioned for Dennis to check the nearest pod, and Dennis went to investigate.

Inside the pod lay two unclothed people, a young man and an older woman, connected by hoses and wires from their mouths, eyes, and genital areas to each other. The pod was dimly lit, and looked to be weather controlled. The two occupants were alive, Dennis could see their pulses, yet they were completely oblivious to the world around them. Something or someone had done this to them, whatever this was. Another soldier went to investigate a different pod, and another one after that.

"The same all over." Said one of the soldiers. "One man to one woman in each pod." He said. Hotchkiss stepped forward to the computer tower. There were a number of fascinating read outs running up one of it's many monitors. One monitor read 'sequence 13.5 ending. Simulation: Cedar Rapids 3.17.1971 beginning.' Hotchkiss went to another monitor. It read something similar, 'Simulation Cedarfalls 11.23.2035 status running.' Hotchkiss backed away from the tower and took in all of the monitors. They seemed to correspond with the pods around them.

"My God... what is this?" He asked himself. He looked at the displays above the pods from the reverse angle, and let his jaw drop wide open. On every monitor, a first person perspective could now be seen. Every person having their own simulated reality on the screen above them. It was a technological marvel, but also a monstrosity of science. "This is no vault..." He said to himself.

"Sir!" Said Dennis, as he rounded the massive computer tower. "Here!" He said. Hotchkiss quickly made his way around the considerable mass of circuitry, only to come face to face with the only singular individual hooked up to the tower.

"She's the only one on her own..." Said Hotchkiss. He looked inside the pod and noted the differences of the young female inside. "Look at this... no hose to the mouth... she's fully clothed... but there's no pulse?" He said. Dennis shook his head and looked over the girl. She was young, as if in her early teenage years. Her face was peaceful, and it reminded him a little of the girl that he fancied back in basic training when he was just sixteen years old. This girl's face was clean however, free from blemishes or scarring. She had one small birthmark on her right cheek, but other than that, she looked uniformly picture perfect. It was almost freaky looking in a sense.

"Something fishy about all this." He said. "This one must be in some kind of stasis... damn... maybe she's prewar?" Asked Dennis. He pointed to the outdated clothing that the young girl wore. Her red dress was covered with a smallish white apron, and her shoes were very old. They looked like the shoes in the old holotape shows from before the year 2000. So to did her knee length socks and red ribbon in her dark hair seem out of place. Nothing in this room made any sense, but the lifeless body of the girl in the pod was the most bizarre.

"That's well before war time. Is that even from the millennium?" Asked Hotchkiss to himself. He scanned the girl for any other clues before turning to Dennis. "Open one of the pods." He ordered.

"That might kill the occupants!" Said the other scientist, as he approached the pod with the strange girl. "Or it could wake them all up!" He warned. Hotchkiss motioned to one of the soldiers nearby, and he along with one other soldier began to tinker with a pod close to them.

"We'll just have to see, won't we? This technology is beyond anything that Robco or Vault-tec ever produced." Said Hotchkiss. "These people are all basically brain dead already." He said, as he crossed his arms and turned toward the two soldiers. The two of them worked tirelessly to open the pod, but found it impenetrable. Hotchkiss turned to the Commander. "Just blast it open." He commanded. The commander nodded and raised his 9mm gun towards the pod in question. A large and jarring image of a face appeared in front of the soldiers and the scientists on the wall in front of them. It was not projected from a visible source, it was more made up of tiny moving fragments of light, emanating from quickly shifting bits of gravity defying metal cubes. The face looked down at them, regarding each person warmly. The face was that of the young girl in the mysterious pod. Her dark brown eyes fixed on Hotchkiss.

"Hello." Said the face of the girl, in a slightly monotone but friendly voice. "William Hotchkiss, it's nice to meet you." She said. Hotchkiss raised an eyebrow and motioned for Dennis to lower his gun.

"Hello... to whom am I speaking?" Asked Hotchkiss to the face. The girl's face seemed to get a little smaller but also closer to Hotchkiss. She looked down at Dennis and then back to Hotchkiss.

"I am the overseer of this vault. I designed it, I constructed it, and I maintain it. My name is Victoria." She said. Hotchkiss nodded and slowly brought his tablet up to eye level.

"You scanned my device? Is that how you know my name?" He asked. The face gave an unconvincing smile, and then quickly returned to it's near emotionless countenance.

"Yes. You are a very interesting person, Mr. Hotchkiss. Although many of your findings and ideas are largely incorrect, I find your pursuit of scientific discovery to be quite admirable especially given the social environment that you are a part of." Said the girl. Dennis looked back around behind them, back to the pod, and saw that the girl was still unconscious. His attention returned to the large face. "I have met scientists very similar to you before. I hope that you and I can become friends." She said.

"Yes!" Said Hotchkiss, stepping forward. "That would be something that we would all like. Can you share some information about this vault with us? We've never seen anything outside of Vault-tec technology used, in terms of vaults and bunkers. How did you alone do all of this?" The girl's attention turned to the soldiers standing by one of the pods, and then to the other scientist in the room. She finally settled her gaze back to Hotchkiss.

"I am not Vault-tec technology, nor am I a product of Robco." She stated. Hotchkiss turned to the other scientist, who in turn gave him a puzzled look back. "I am Victoria. I am the first." She added. Hotchkiss turned back around to the face.

"I don't understand, are you this girl?" He asked, pointing to the girl in the pod. She had still not moved or even stirred in the least bit. "Or are you part of the computer system here?" Asked Hotchkiss. The face furrowed her brow slightly and seemed to tilt to the side in a questioning manner.

"Yes, I am that girl. I designed the vault, I constructed the vault, and I maintain the vault." She said, shaking her head slightly at Hotchkiss, as if his question was the most rudimentary thing he could have asked. "I am currently multi-tasking in several areas that require my attention, but I will be with you shortly." She added. Dennis leaned over to Hotchkiss.

"Sir, I've got a nasty feeling about this kid. I think it would be prudent to set up communication with this vault from a more secure area." He said, hoping to incite the scientist into a reasonable retreat.

"There's no need for that, Edward." Said the girl, as she focused her attention on him. Dennis snapped his face towards her. "There is no area more secure than this one, so long as you follow the protocols set in place for this vault." She continued.

"What sort of protocols?" Asked Hotchkiss. Dennis backed away, being very careful not to make any sudden movements. "Why are these people in these chambers like this? What's happening to them?" Asked Hotchkiss, as he stepped forward.

"Safety protocols, of course, Mr. Hotchkiss. I wouldn't want anyone getting hurt." Said the face. She returned her eyes to Hotchkiss. "Especially in light of your activities six days ago, 13.7 miles south of Cedar Rapids." She continued. Hotchkiss stumbled and his mouth involuntarily opened and closed a few times.

"That... six days? Six days ago south of Cedar..." Began Hotchkiss. The face tilted to the side once again.

"You had Commander Dennis shoot and kill three human beings, and made their respective families watch as their loved ones perished at his hands. That was only six days ago, I would think that a man of your intellect could remember an event as recent as that." Said the face, once again shaking her head in a shameful manner. "They begged for mercy, and private Thompson laughed. Lieutenant Garcia even fired several rounds into one of the bodies so that the grieving family members could not bare to see the corpse's face. Do you remember?" She said, still in her monotone but friendly tone.

"That was unfortunate..." Began Hotchkiss. Dennis made a slight hand motion to his squad, and they moved into a formation around Hotchkiss and the other scientist. "There were misunderstandings on both sides..." He said. The face turned to look at the formation and gave her quick unconvincing smile once more.

"There are still sides, outside of this vault? Tell me, Mr. Hotchkiss, did we win? Did America win the war?" She asked, that slight inhuman smile still curling at her lips. "You are the first outside human contact that I've had since October 15th, 2077. You are by and large the only accurate depiction of modern human society that I have access to at this moment." She added.

"We remain triumphant and strong willed as a nation." Said Hotchkiss, spouting out the words of the Enclave. He gave the face a nod. "We're endeavouring to rebuild, to work together so that we can be great again." He said. The face, in some indescribable way, went cold.

"I am a proud American, Mr. Hotchkiss. All of my parts were manufactured in America. The scientists who altered my body and programmed me did so to advance American life. I believe in the core values put forth by our founding fathers, so many years ago." She said. Dennis put a hand on Hotchkiss's shoulder.

"Sir, we have to leave." He said. Hotchkiss gave him a slight nod. The face teleported it's position to in front of their exit. Dennis and the rest of the soldiers readied their firearms. The face of the girl beamed a toothy smile down at them.

"All of these people in the pods around you, are safe. They live in a perpetual retelling of the golden age of the United States of America, until such time as the environment is deemed safe for human life. With your entrance to this vault, I have been given the good news that the outside world is indeed nearing the required safety levels needed to begin the process of ending these simulations." She said, moving closer to the group. Her smile faded and she turned her attention to Hotchkiss once more. "Regrettably, you, Mr. Hotchkiss, Commander Dennis, Private Thompson, and Lieutenant Garcia, you are variables in this equation used to measure the safety requirements of the environment. Indeed, I have added the entirety of the Enclave, the Brotherhood of Steel, the Legions of Caesar and the New California Republic army into my equation." She said. Dennis and the soldiers raised their guns and formed a circle around the two scientists.

"I think we can discuss this in a more amiable fashion, sometime later..." Began Hotchkiss, with a shaky voice. The face smiled at them all.

"My multi-tasking is at an end. I can focus on you now. Mr. Hotchkiss, as I said, I am a proud American citizen. Do you know this flag?" Said the face. The face was replaced in front of them with an old American flag, wavering in some unseen wind. Hotchkiss began to panic, and the squad led him around the computer tower in a defensive position. "It represented the people of this country, not it's leaders. There was a time when people would stand together for this flag, in unity, with the hope of a bright future in store for them." Said the girl's voice. Dennis motioned to his squad to take point towards the door.

"We're getting you out of here, now!" He hissed at Hotchkiss. Hotchkiss gritted his teeth, and his palms went cold. "Hotchkiss! Are you listening to me? We're moving!" Said Dennis.

"When I was in school, I would stand at attention for this flag. I believed in these words, I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty..." Began the voice. The squad went to move, but just as they passed the girl's pod, it hissed out and steam shot across the soldiers field of vision. They became disoriented and separated from each other. The girl's voice continued. "... and justice for all."

"Shit!" Yelled the younger scientist, as the pod's glass covering shattered. The lights in the atrium turned yellow, and a horrible screeching sound filled the air. The girl sat up in the pod and turned her emotionless face towards Hotchkiss.

"Intruders. Terminate all hostiles, protect the humans." Said the girl, Victoria. In an instant, five of the tall white androids filed into the room, including Green Thumb 2. The soldiers took cover and began to immediately fire upon the droids. Hotchkiss hid behind one of the pods along with the other scientist, and Dennis who had taken cover there too. "Terminate." Said Victoria again, as the white droids began to fire hot green bursts of plasma from their now opened faces.

One droid went down in an explosive death, then another, and then one of the soldiers. His tesla armor melted around him and he screamed helplessly as the plasma reached the suits power cells, before cooking him alive. The gruesome death incited the commander.

"Grenades!" He ordered. The soldiers across from him both flung their grenades in unison at the closest droid. It caught one grenade in mid air and tossed it back to the soldiers, just before the second grenade blew it's head off. It dropped to the ground just as the two soldiers tried to escape the blast, one did not make it and his leg was torn from his body. He screamed for a few seconds and then blacked out into death. The two remaining droids concentrated their fire on the pilot, and finally caught him in the head. His head disappeared into a red haze, and his body slumped over towards Dennis.

"Fuck!" Yelled the young scientist. "I told you not to touch the pod! I fucking told you!" He screamed. Dennis tossed his grenade into the air near the droids and ran out into the open, firing on the closest droid. It returned fire, but was blasted by two other soldiers. It's head exploded and it stopped moving, while the last remaining droid was caught in the explosion of the grenade. Silence filled the room as Hotchkiss slowly stood up to survey the damage. The pods, save for the one that the girl had been in, were still in clean functional order. His soldiers however, had been reduced to just four, and no pilot. The girl too, had apparently escaped in the chaos of the fire fight.

"Damn..." Said one of the soldiers as he stood up. He pointed to the doorway so that the others could see. Five dead unarmed scientists lay at it's entrance, having tried to investigate the gunshots. "Damn." He repeated. Hotchkiss was dumbfounded, his mind raced and the only thing he could think of was a court martial waiting for him in Chicago.

"Sir, we have to fall back and regroup- there could be other security measures to deal with here." Said the commander, who sounded a little shaken. "Those weapons cut right through our armor. We can't risk any confrontation!" He added. Hotchkiss nodded and moved with the other scientist to join the four soldiers. A clanking sound behind them made Dennis spin around.

"Watch it!" Screamed Dennis, as the four soldiers lifted their guns again. Hotchkiss turned around, just in time to see his fellow scientist get a tiny fist shoved upward through his abdomen, and into his chest. A horrible spray of blood and tissue left the young man's mouth, as he tried to scream out. The little girl lifted him off the ground with her tiny arm.

"Bleck!" Gurgled out the scientist. Then he went limp and the light left his eyes. The little girl who had been sleeping, was now fully awake. She dropped the corpse onto the floor and then turned her attention to the rest of the group. Her once clean red dress was spattered with the dark red insides of a nameless scientist, and her perfectly kept hair had a small streak of red blood through her pulled back ponytail. The girl's sweet looking face showed no emotion, no anger or any kind of malice, but in the blink of an eye her foot went up to the jaw of Hotchkiss's head, there was a sickening wet snapping sound, and his head detached from his neck. The head flew into the air, leaving a rocket of blood and bone in it's path. Hotchkiss's decapitated head smacked one soldier in his chest.

"Fuck!" Yelled the soldier, as he dropped his gun and scraped the viscera off of his chest. "Fuck this!" He screamed as he ran for the door. The other soldiers fired upon the girl, but she had disappeared behind the pod quicker than their eyes could see. A plasma pistol shot rang out, and the retreating soldier dropped to his knees. His armor had a large glowing green hole in it, and Dennis could see through the poor man's chest to other side of the door.

"No!" Yelled out Dennis, as he went running to find the girl. Another shot rang out and the retreating soldier's head was gone. Simply gone, as if it had never been on his body. The geysering body fell to the floor, and Dennis rounded the corner. There was no one. Another shot rang out and the two other soldiers screamed, just before a massive grenade explosion tore them both limb from limb. One of the men's helmet had been blown off, and his mouth was moving as if he were to trying to mutter something out to Dennis. The child had shot one of the soldier's grenades, while it was still on his belt. Dennis felt dizzy, and panicked, his heart beat in his chest like a drum during a parade, and he quickly turned around, gun drawn and shaking. He was alone, in this room with this horrible child. How could a girl so small do all of this?! The girl was so small that she couldn't be seen over the pods and equipment of the room. Just as he decided to make a run for it, he heard the quick footsteps behind him and then he felt the sharp pain in his gut. "F-" He got out, before falling to his knees.

Dennis looked down at his armor, and the long piece of glass had punctured through his armor, somehow, someway, and it had pierced him right into his stomach, the shard painfully sticking out of it. He felt a swarm of nauseating feelings wash over him, and he threw up inside of his helmet. His eyes teared up and the vomit inside his armor sloshed around as he stumbled forward, his gun still in hand. He raised it up and spun around, looking for the abominable little bitch that had just murdered his entire squad.

Then there came the searing pain as his gun arm was ripped from his body, still in it's armor casing, by a tiny hand. He fell backwards and sputtered, his remaining arm shaking uncontrollably. He looked up into the yellow lights of the atrium, and watched as they returned to their happy glow once more. The girl appeared in his field of vision, upside down from his vantage point. She stood over him, emotionless and cold, covered in his blood, and his arm still in her grasp. His index finger on his gun arm twitched, and he gasped out. He tried to say anything at her, but he choked on his own blood. The girl brought her foot up, covered in a delicate little black buckled shoe from pre war times, and then brought it down quickly and firmly onto Dennis's forehead. He heard the cracking, and then he was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

 **The ghost of Christmas past.**

Malloy sat outside of the quiet house on Washinton Avenue, biding his time with a quick glance of his photo album. The slides were not in the best shape to be sure, but he had kept his cherished memories as safe as possible, taking them with him on all of his journeys. Childhood moments, captured on holofilm, immortalized for his viewing at any time.

Most of all, Malloy missed his Mother. She had raised her four children with the best care she could have mustered, that anyone could have possessed in the wasteland. Living in their large community within the safety of the secure vault that had been reclaimed by the Enclave had given his family a real chance at survival. The other Enclave families in the vault were likewise well off, in comparison to the poor dwellers of the wasteland outside.

Malloy pulled up a picture of him and his Mother, he was sat upon her lap when he was just two year of age, with a rather skimpy looking birthday cake in front of them. He smiled and put his album down for a brief second to check the time. Another hour had passed since the soldiers under Commander Dennis had disappeared into the vault, along with Hotchkiss and the rest of the science team. Malloy had been all alone for three hours, and there had been no radio communication since then. That in itself was not too unusual, vaults often interfered with radio broadcasts and transmissions of data. What was odd about the situation was the stillness of everything. Hours ago, the scientists were animated with uncontrollable excitement, ready to bring their new discovery up to the surface for further examinations- and yet there were no signs of scrambling scientists with their new toys. There were no soldiers busily carrying old world tech out into the street.

"Hotchkiss? Anyone read?" Asked Malloy, for the fifth time that hour. He pressed the button on his radio and shook the device for extra good measure. The radio brought back a crackle and then it's normal amount of static. He sighed out and leaned back in his chair that had been set up in the street. There were the usual walls set up around their little camp, with an automated turret system to boot, so Malloy felt little in the ways of vulnerable or worried. He closed his eyes and yawned loudly, taking his hat off to reveal his buzzed blonde hair atop his head, and fanned himself with the brim of the cap.

He opened his eyes wide at the sudden sound of multiple footsteps that came from the house. Malloy sat up at attention and replaced his hat, trying very hard to look attentive. His expectation of seeing a scientist and maybe a few soldiers was shattered, in it's place came the reality of three very tall faceless, white, stick figure-like robots. They calmly walked past him as he grabbed for his plasma pistol. One of the tall robots seemed to turn it's 'face' toward him briefly, before continuing on with it's commrades.

"Stop!" Ordered Malloy, as he backed up towards the turret system. "Halt!" He demanded. The robots ignored him and then descended upon the vertibird. They all stood in a line in front of it, and then each placed their hands gently on the hull of the airship. Malloy stared at them, his hand on his pistol the entire time. They had stopped. He hit the button on his radio and turned towards the house again.

"Hello." Said a girl in a rather strange looking outfit. Malloy dropped his radio in surprise and stumbled over opening his holster. He tried to pull out his firearm, but in his fright and panic he had instead unbuckled his belt, and his trousers fell down around his ankles. The girl tilted her head to the side and watched as Malloy struggled to bring them back up to his waist. "My name is Victoria, it's nice to meet you." She said, smiling just a little as Malloy finally got his trousers back in working order. He stood up straight, his face red with embarrassment. Malloy cleared his throat and tried to act as if nothing had just happened.

"I'm third science officer Connor Malloy of the three hundred and..." He began. Damn it all, he had forgotten his regiment number. Malloy was a fresh recruit into the Enclave, and he was still 'wet behind the ears' as Hotchkiss had put it. The girl, Victoria stood patiently, with a large backpack strapped to her back, silently and slowly swaying left and right as she waited for Malloy's response. "I'm with the Enclave." Said Malloy at last. Victoria smiled.

"If you're with the Enclave, then why are you out here all alone?" She asked him, stepping forward. The gun turret activated and started following Victoria's movement. Malloy quickly turned around and disabled the turret behind him. The small girl, standing at less than five foot tall, stood at the table in the ruined street and she had begun investigating his photo album.

"I'm sorry- are these things with you?" Asked Malloy, pointing to the statue like robots by the vertibird. Victoria looked up at him with a strangely discomforting smile, and then returned to her investigation of his slides. Malloy continued. "Are you from the vault, from inside that house?" He asked.

"I used to live there." Said Victoria, as she flipped through his album. She had stopped on one photo in particular. She stood staring down at the photo of his family on Christmas morning, some ten years prior. "Christmas..." She said. Malloy cautiously stepped forward and pressed a button on his tablet, magnifying the photo for the girl.

"You know about Christmas?" He asked her. She nodded silently and inspected the photo, seemingly intranced by the lights and the little plastic tree that had been set up in the vault's atrium. "Did you used to have Christmas day, in that house? In that Vault?" Asked Malloy. Victoria snapped out of her thoughts, and then lost all interest in the photo album. She instead turned towards the house in question.

"We used to have Christmas day in there." She repeated to Malloy. Her voice was strangely mechanical sounding. Monotone in her inflection, and a little to calculated for Malloy to ignore. Victoria turned her back to him and looked the house up and down. "I had a lot of Christmas days. With my Mother and my Father, with my sisters and my brother..." She trailed off, sounding almost sad, as sad as her inflection would permit.

"Oh?" Asked Malloy, as he grabbed his tablet and turned on it's recording device. "H-how long ago?" He asked, almost dreading the answer. His hands were shaking, and he felt his heart beating rapidly. There had been something not quite right about the child in front of him. Victoria moved just a little too weirdly, her eyes were distant looking, and her smile had been... it had been at best, the same kind of smile that formed upon a dead man's face after he had been left to the elements.

"It was a long time ago." Answered the girl at last. "My last Christmas day in that house was with my great-great niece and her family. My Nephew was too sick to come, too old." She said, as she looked down at the steps of the ruined house. Malloy snapped a picture of Victoria, and she spun around to face him.

"Are you saying that you're from before the w-war?" Asked Malloy. He had correctly guessed that this girl, as real as she looked, was not human at all. She was indeed one more of the machines that had walked out from the house. The thing in front of him was displayed to him on his tablet as unknown product, cybernetics. "You-are you?..." He began to ask. Victoria gently grabbed the tablet out of Malloy's hand, quickly enough that he couldn't react in time to stop her. She looked at his display and then looked back to him.

"Before the war." Said Victoria, rather simply. She placed the tablet back into Malloy's hand. "Before the war, I lived here. After the war, I lived down there." She said, pointing to the street beneath them. Malloy involuntarily shivered, and Victoria tilted her head again, inspecting the young scientist's body language.

"Then you met the rest of my team? Dr. Hotchkiss and Commander Dennis? Are they still down there?" He asked, putting his tablet back into his jacket. Victoria returned herself to a normal standing upright position, and smiled that awful smile again at him.

"They're still down there." She said simply. A chill ran through Malloy, and he knew instinctively, that those men were not going to be coming back up to the surface. Victoria shifted her focus down to Malloy's pistol, and then back up to his eyes. "Are you going to use that?" She asked. Malloy shook his head and backed away from her.

"I never use it." He claimed, in all honesty. The little girl in the overly clean red dress and white knee high socks stepped closer to him. "D-do you need it?" Asked Malloy, as he fumbled over his words. He opened his holster and grabbed the gun by it's handle, holding it out to her in a non-threatening way. Victoria took the pistol and examined it.

It was old and had been used many times. She zoomed in on some tiny fractures on the guns outer casing, and then scanned the fractures for resins and welds. The gun had been carefully maintained, whereas the guns of the men that she had terminated were new, well constructed and sturdy. This gun, was in some way loved by it's owner. Victoria returned her gaze to the young man in front of her. His body language read as frightened and desperate, and his heart rate was well over normal human conditions. Most of all, Victoria scanned Malloy's voice stress as he spoke. She stood with the pistol in her hand, looking up at Malloy.

"Tell me about your last Christmas day, Connor." Said Victoria. Malloy stuttered and then swallowed hard.

"It was in Chicago. The Brotherhood of Steel pushed out the Enclave, and we lost the Vault. It was Christmas eve, the night of the battle." He said, glancing quickly over at the three other robots. They had not shifted. "M-my father died that night. That's his pistol." Said Malloy, as he pointed to the gun in Victoria's hand.

"That was Christmas eve." Said Victoria. Malloy nodded.

"All of the families of the Enclave were on the run for Christmas morning. We had to escape Chicago. My family went north. A General gave me that gun weeks after that. I don't need it." He said, still stuttering. "I don't really celebrate it anymore." He added. Victoria nodded.

"Do you mean that you don't celebrate Christmas anymore, or that you don't celebrate this gun anymore?" She asked him. Malloy shrugged and gave out a nervous laugh.

"I guess neither." He said, his arms extended outward in defeat. Victoria looked at the pistol once more.

"You were born into the Enclave." She stated. Malloy nodded. "Would you have joined the Enclave, if you had been born elsewhere?" Asked Victoria. Malloy again shrugged.

"I don't know." He said. Victoria analyzed his voice stress patterns and smiled at him. Malloy backed up a little again.

"Merry Christmas, Connor." Said the small girl, as she handed his pistol back to him. Malloy took the gun with a shaky hand and put it back into his holster. She smiled at him once more and then turned on her heels towards the vertibird. The three robots that had been stationed there all dropped their arms, and the doors of the vertibird inexplicably opened. One by one the tall white robots stepped into the airship, with Victoria following them in. She turned to look at Malloy one more time and then disappeared into the cockpit area of the vertibird.

Malloy watched silently, still shaking, as the vertibird sprang to life. It's engines roared and it slowly lifted off of the ground. He nearly sank to his knees and began to sniffle as the airship took off, and left the area. It's roar faded away, and he was left alone, the last man standing in the ruins of what had once been called Cedar Rapids.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

 **The Broken Heartland**

The Nuclear devastation that had destroyed most of the Earth was a long lasting burden on the survivors of the great war. The plants, the animals, and all manner of living things had to adapt in often horrible ways to survive. The trees that had once dotted the land that Victoria knew so well, were not little more than shriveled up sticks, that conserved every droplet of moisture and energy giving sugars to themselves. The trees bore not one fruit in this hellish reshaping of the environment, save for the few disgusting mutations that would drop foul tasting flesh to the ground in order to perpetuate their species.

So too had the animals of the world changed, sometimes in drastic fashion. As Victoria read through the limited database of the Enclave's vertibird, she found entry after entry on the more dangerous mutations that had taken place within several types of bears, dogs, deer, and birds. There were reportedly horrible things in the rivers and lakes now as well, that would often prey on thirsty wastelanders, gigantic crab-like creatures that showed a small level of intelligence and organization. Radioactive oversized scorpions, ants, and flies dotted the landscape of every state, nightmarishly large cockroaches were a constant concern of every settlement.

The food that these poor people of the wasteland had to subsist on were equally terrible, more often than not they would partake of deadly pre war rations, that had been tainted with radiation. Equally tainted was the water that many had to drink, with high levels of radiation in most readily available water sources. The animals that could be hunted or farmed had poisoned meat as well. Brahmin, as they were now called, were two headed adaptations of the bovine that used to feed America every night at the dinner table. These twisted shadows of cattle animals, they were filthy and not overly nutritious in value. Brahmin grazed upon the sick and dying radioactive moss and fungi that littered the dry and broken plains around them. Giant mole rats, dogs, sickly and aggressive deer meat, all of it was a death sentence to most of the survivors.

Then there were the mutants, the super mutants. They were big, smart, and lethal. They used advanced weaponary and tactics against the surviving members of the human race, in order to steal them away to either be eaten, or saved for some other unknown purpose. The worst threat of the wasteland by far, worse than the Enclave soldiers, or the Brotherhood of Steel's knights, even more than the roving gangs of cannibalistic raiders, were the deathclaws.

Victoria read over the profiles on the deathclaw species, and took in all that she could on how to best combat them. The Enclave had success in tinkering with some deathclaws, with mind control devices and genetic engineering, but on the whole the species was simply too much of a hazard to use as a reliable weapon in their war against the Brotherhood of Steel. Most of the deathclaws had horrible eyesight, but that did not offset their brute strength, excellent sense of hearing and smell, and their frightening speed. There were reports of radiant versions of the species in the commonwealth, and some experimental deathclaws that could mimic human speech.

The deathclaws would have to take priority over the other hostile agents of the wasteland. There would have to be a campaign of extermination and sterilization of the species. Victoria stopped her reading of the Enclave's database, and aimed the vertibird toward the old world building that she had once been so familiar with. The ruins of the city that she had grown up in were jarring, even for her. She had readied herself for the city being a loss, with the infrastructure damaged and perhaps some lasting radioactive zones, but she simply could not have calculated the amount of destruction that her little town had received.

Indeed, her little city had been known by the enemy country of China for some time before the war, once, the two countries had traded bountiful supplies with each other, much of the supplies to China had come from the mid-west. Cedar Rapids had been one such provider of grains, cereals, meat, and corn-syrup. It had once been home to the largest cereal factory in the world, and still held distinction as a top producer of cereal and grain even into the final days of civilization, but more than that, the poor doomed city of Cedar Rapids had been home to Rockwell Collins, and later Rockwell aerospace.

Rockwell had major contracts with the U.S. government, having been the developer and provider of the newest radio components and aerospace mechanisms needed for high altitude flight. Not known to the majority of the public however, Rockwell also dabbled in weaponized radio signals, artificial intelligence, and atomic engines that were slated to be small enough to fit inside of a watch. China had it's spies, and when war broke out, all of these things made Rockwell, and the surrounding city of Cedar Rapids, one of the many targets of Nuclear finality. As Victoria landed her new vertibird in the rubble of the acerage that had been the main building of Rockwell aerospace, a small frown crossed her face.

The radiation levels near the old site were too lethal for human beings to survive, in fact it seemed that China had delivered a missile packed with dirty intent. This missile was intended to end all life within the city, for many many of hundreds of years yet to come. There were unusually high concentrations of strontium 3 in the soil around the site, and huge amounts of uranium still buzzing with energy all around her. It had been an impressive and definitive show of force by the opposing country. The people of the city had likely all vanished within a millisecond of it's explosion, but the bomb had failed to destroy the true dangers that lurked in the old city. Somethings did not die easily, and others still would not perish even with the life altering explosion that had ripped through all of the organic life that used to run Rockwell aerospace.

Victoria left the vertibird, escorted by one of the tall white droids in her command, and headed to the locked doors of the one standing metal structure in the ruins of the main building. As soon as her foot hit the metal of the building, a wild and frantic shaking took place around her, and the doors of the last structure sprang to life. A red light shone on the door and it glared brightly.

"Ah! Welcome back, Vicki!" Said a very kind sounding voice, with an old english accent. "Back to burn the midnight oil, I see?" It said to her. Victoria walked up to the doors and gave the light a sad smile.

"Hello Winston." She said. "How are you feeling?" She asked. The red light flickered and then glared again.

"I think I'm doing rather well, actually. I've beaten that damnable coffee machine at chess twice, since you've been away." Said Winston, the red beam of light. "Although I think I should tell you, that some projects have been piling up lately. Much of the workforce has taken ill for the past few years." It said. Victoria nodded.

"You can probably write them off of the employee identification security protocol." She said. "They're dead." She added. Winston flickered rapidly before shining brightly once more.

"Dead? Dead you say? Pity, I was programmed to send a condolence card to any employee's surviving family members in case of an employee death. I can't seem to find any..." Said Winston. "Vicki, could you maybe pop on down to the hallmark store and pick up a few supplies?" It started to ask. Victoria put a hand up to the door.

"Winston, all of the human workers, the employees and the CEOs, the red and blue assets, and the independent cafeteria workers are all dead. They have no surviving family members to send cards to." She said. Winston flickered again, obviously taking in the scope of all that she had said. "There is no more hallmark store, or condolence cards. Rockwell aerospace no longer functions as a business." Victoria added. Winston continued to flicker until finally it stopped and it's light shined brightly again.

"What about a fruit basket then?" It asked. Victoria placed her palm on the red light.

"Open the doors." She said. Winston disappeared and the huge metal doors opened up for her. She stepped inside the structure and stood on a still functional lift that led downward. The white android followed Victoria in, and together they both slowly made their way down to the under building of Rockwell aerospace. The ride down ended abruptly at the bottom, with a strange crunching sound. Victoria hopped down from the lift and inspected the object that had wedged itself inbetween the floor and the gears of the elevating platform.

A dried out old husk of a human corpse lay broken and shattered at the lift's gears. Victoria pulled the skeletal remains away from the gears, and the lift ended it's journey with the crushing of the remaining bones. She held the ribcage in her hands and inspected the old world device that it housed. The large and vaccuum tube powered pacemaker inside the old bones had once belonged to a man named Skinner. Victoria remembered him well, as he was the only older man on the workforce that fully understood that she was his equal in age.

Victoria's alterations at the hands of madmen, just after her birth, had caused her to stop aging at around thirteen years of age. She was forever stuck in her small body, unable to garner the respect that her years of life experience had warranted. Skinner knew her back in her school days in fact, 'Vicki', as they all had called her, was often the center of speculation in the lunch room. That was true in her high school class, as much as it had been at Rockwell aerospace. Victoria's last remaining bits of organic human material had been replaced in her body by tiny microscopic machines sometime in the 1990's. Well before the rumblings of the last war had ever started.

She patted the ribcage gently and replaced it by the lift once more, and then turned toward the factory floor. The bones of her former co-worker's scattered the walkways and halls of the under building, and one by one, Victoria recognized them either through name badge or through distinguishing marks on their remains. The unfortunate truth was, those that were down in the under building working at the moment when the bomb fell, died within probably three agonizing minutes. The levels of radiation had slowly cooked them as it penetrated the thick building's walls.

Finally she and the white droid came to their destination. A line of robotic arms and monitors bordered a vast tunnel, set for the mass production of electronics and metallic casings. Victoria sat at a terminal and powered it on. The factory lit up, and loud clanking and hissing noises filled the silent catacomb. The tall white android made it's way into the center of the factory, and then turned back towards Victoria. She typed at the keyboard of the terminal in blinding speed, and all at once many of the robotic arms of the factory floor went about dismantling the android. It took less than a minute for the robot to be broken down to it's components.

Victoria input command after command, and finally hit an execution button for the factory. It steamed to full life, and began production once more. The first android completed by the factory took only seven minutes to complete. It was also tall, but not at all slender. It had multiple arms and legs, with a swiveling head unit. It quickly crept away from the production line and then went to another terminal by the line. It too started plugging in numbers and commands into the production line up. The second android, identical to the first, took only six minutes to complete. It repeated the process of the first, and so on and so on, until within the hour there were twenty androids. The twenty first android, completed in just one and half minutes, clamored away from the production line and climbed up the elevator shaft, and out into the wasteland. It was followed by another freshly produced android, and another after that.

Soon Victoria's two other white androids descended into the building, carrying loads of steel and the rotten soil from up above. She made her way over to them and directed them to their new seats. More steel and more dirt were brought down by a few of the newer android models, until the production line was going at full speed. With the resources from the old world above, Victoria estimated that she would be able to make approximately thirty five hundred of the machines needed to exterminate the deathclaws. More resources would be gathered, and from the factory epicenter her cleansing army would go forth and remove the first priority hostiles of the wasteland.

She left back up the elevator shaft, with a bit of a heavy heart, knowing that her androids, far superior to anything produced by the old world, would be met with terror and hostility from most wastelanders. She was carrying out the actions that scientists in the old world had specifically feared her doing. Replicating android life in order to over take organic life. It was a neccessary step in the rebuilding of society though... she was eighty-six percent sure of that.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

 **Dead street.**

The vertibird sped through the night sky to the south. It's roaring engines scaring small herds of brahmin whenever it passed over one of their many grazing points between Victoria's former city, and the city that used to lie due south of it. That place, Iowa City, had been home to hundreds of thousands of people before the war, ranging from everyday citizens, to world class doctors at the university hospital. It had been a huge college town, and it's football team regularly appeared on television sets around the nation during bowl games. Bowl games, were a thing that she had always taken for granted.

Merriment and mirth had always filled the stands at the stadium, with fans adorning the colors of gold and black in honor of the team garb. The logo of the team, a sytlized hawk head was emblazoned on every shirt in the crowd, and faces were painted in two hues. Victoria herself had attended a few games at that stadium in question, where she too had worn the colors of the proud college team. That had been over two centuries ago. Now, as she piloted the vertibird towards the city that once played host to cheering crowds and busy night life, her heart began to sink ever downward. She landed the airship just outside of the blasted boneyard that was the city limits, and checked her internal map once more.

It had not just been the initial destruction of the nuclear bombs that had decimated all the structures of the world. Society had fallen apart, quickly, and violently. Men fought each other for food, water, and worse. Subsequent battles had left most of the old world in shambles, and with no proper maintenance all of the gleaming skyscrapers tumbled down to the streets. With no infrastructure, the streets themselves caved in and gave way to the elements. These streets before Victoria, were completely foreign to her. It seemed to her that there had been one of two massive earthquakes in the area after the bombs fell. Land had shifted, streets were broken and completely disjointed from where they should have been. Large sinkholes had also overtaken the land, and the entirety of the largest shopping mall in the area had been swallowed up. Now only the broken corner of a rooftop access could be seen poking out of the foul mire that had eaten up the building.

Victoria unstrapped herself from her seat and went about her task. She had decided that it would be best to gather some first hand intelligence on the people of the wasteland. Upon reading the Enclave's database, she happened to find that a new settlement had risen from the ashes of Iowa City. The new town was called Nicksta, and it housed perhaps Three hundred people at any given time. The settlement of Nicksta was a hub of merchants and travelers that were looking for a place to sleep, or a place to sell some scavenged goods. She could easily fit in with the crowds of survivors with just a few modifications to her appearance.

The first modification was easy. Victoria simply messed her hair up a little, and dirtied her face with some oil and grit from the vertibird. The next was a little more tricky, her clothes were not of this age, and they were not in the typical condition that most articles would be found in. She was able to find a few extra Enclave jackets and pants in the supply chest of the vertibird, and she fashioned from them a dirty and torn jacket that she wore as a makeshift dress. A leather belt around her waist cinched it all together, and within mere minutes she found herself looking the part. She ripped off the badges from the jacket, and put one of the scientist's hats on her head and looked in a reflective surface on the back end of the vertibird. One last look of scrutiny, and she was off.

The doors of the vertibird opened, and Victoria grabbed her large backpack full of supplies as she left out of the airship. The doors clanked closed behind her, and the barefoot girl turned around to make sure they were secured. They made a loud clank again, and she was off. Traversing the wasteland on foot was much different.

Aside from her bloody and violent reintroduction into the living world, and her small excursion into the ruins of Rockwell aerospace, Victoria had been stationary for well over fifty years. She had always powered on every forty to fifty years or so, just to run diagnostics on the vault and to check on her humans. The times between when she walked the halls of the vault, and when she immersed herself into the neverending simulations had grown increasingly shorter with each episode.

She missed interacting with people, that was a certainty now. In this, Victoria was not like a true artificial intelligence, or a mindless robot. Both of which she had been accused of being in her time. It had been her family, her real family, that had convinced her to believe otherwise. She had been truly loved by her Mother and Father, even through her roughest times of childhood, after she had been returned to them. Altered and somewhat... askew, at times. The days of her youth, leading up to the millenium, had been golden times. People were usually friendly, civil towards each other, at the very least they were respectful.

It wasn't until that particularly nasty development sometime back in 1995, that she didn't believe that things would always be so rosey. The day that she herself realized that she was not the same, really not the same as anyone else. For as much as she loved her family, the knowledge of her differences to them made it impossible for her to ignore their constant aging. Victoria had looked at a family picture that year, and the at the family picture from the year before, and had seen the horrible truth of what the future would provide for her. She had reasoned out on that day that she would not die in any natural sense- that had been taken from her. She thought that she would go on never knowing the ravages of time as her family members did.

No, the merciless march of time had affected her. It took her Father first, and then her grand parents. Her Mother, her sister, more and more she lost them, until at last she buried her older brother. At last, she the girl who had been born a normal healthy child, stood stoically at graveside- as a chilling confirmation to the horrors that would await those that were foolish enough to try to attain eternal life. Victoria, or as she was called back then, Vicki, began to learn all too well about time, life, and the inevitable human fate that was death.

Vicki, still a child even back then, knew that there was no such thing as eternal life- there could only be prolonged existence. The ground that Victoria climbed across now reminded her very much of those graveside services, so many centuries ago. The deafening silence of the dearly departed, it was present here too. Even all these years later. She stopped and scanned the horizon as she climbed one last hill that used to be part of an interstate off-ramp.

Victoria flipped her scan data back and forth between infrared light, thermal vision, and her low light level vision sensors. Despite all that she had read about in the Enclave's database, she found herself alone. She hoisted her backpack up on her shoulders again, and continued onward towards the settlement known as Nicksta.

Being alone had become a real problem, and it was likely the reason that Victoria had become increasingly addicted to immersing herself in the simulations within the vault of her own making. There was real misery to be had in real life, but there was simulated happiness to be enjoyed in the dream like worlds of the super computer's programs. Getting away from the simulations, facing the wastelands, maybe it was better for her. It would certainly be better for the wastelanders. There were injustices in the world, and that was one thing that Victoria could fix.

She did not implicitly enjoy killing the men who had murdered the defenseless merchants that she had read about in William Hotchkiss's journal entry, but she did feel a very strong sense of direction and purpose with the collective termination. Victoria felt that it had been a 50/50 chance that men like those from the Enclave would have been the first to find her vault. She had hoped however in all truth, that it would have been several more hundred years before she and her humans were first discovered. That would have given the wasteland time to flourish.

This place, looked like it might never see a healthy blade of grass again. She crossed the mire that she had seen from her vertibird and finally saw the lights of the settlement ahead. Victoria had to be careful with how she approached the settlers, her one initiative was to blend in with the survivors, and learn about the wasteland at the ground level. Hopefully she could obtain new information about the social orders and the societal changes which had taken hold. She clamored over a few destroyed buildings and hollowed out shells of automobiles, and then made her way further into the ruins of the college district. Her attention turned to a burnt out large bus, sitting haphazardly in the middle of a nearby street crossing. Something or someone had made a noise from within the metal wreckage.

"Hello?" She asked, trying to sound friendly. The something or someone remained silent. Victoria scanned the bus with her thermal sensors and spotted two humanoid figures, hunched over on the inside. She calculated that if the two inside the bus were waiting to ambush her, they would have done it by then. Under cover of darkness, they would have taken most people by surprise quite easily. She stepped forward towards the bus, her footsteps echoing on the pavement below as she drew near. "I'm not going to hurt you, you can come out. Come out, and say hi." She said. Her response was an exasperated sounding hiss.

A horrible looking pair of humans, that looked very much like reanimated shambling corpses burst through the windows of the bus and stared down at Victoria. The larger of the two hissed at her again and then backed away from her, while the other smaller one sniffed the air. The small one stepped closer to her, still sniffing and snorting, until it was just a few feet away. The larger one hunched over once more, breathing heavily, releasing it's foul breath into the air. Victoria had not read about this in the Enclave's database, or in Hotchkiss's journal. She held her hand up to the rancid looking creature, palm up.

"Hello.~" She said again to it. It hissed loudly and ducked down from her hand, snapping it's jaws wildly in aggression as it back away from her. Victoria frowned. Her scan of the creature was conclusive- what was before her was indeed a human being. A human being, mutated into what could only be described as the walking dead. Desiccated flesh hung off of the face of the smaller dead faced thing, and it's left eye was purely white. It hissed again and made a guttural sound. "I'm sorry that this happened to you." Said Victoria. The creature leaped towards her with malicious intent.

"Stop!" She demanded, as the smaller creature ran towards her, frantically waving it's broken hands at her in an aggressive display. The other creature followed suit, and let out a loud yell of sorts. The smaller one went to bite Victoria on her shoulder and she quickly dodged it's teeth. Her internal sensors started to flare up, and Victoria could see that all around her more and more creatures were closing in. The larger creature also ran up to her, arm raised up and ready to claw her in the face. "I'll have to hurt you!" Said Victoria, as she brought her hands up in a defensive position.

The larger creature brought it's arm down and Victoria caught it with her left hand, stopping it's momentum dead. The creature was still intent on snapping it's teeth on her face however, and it moved in for the kill. As quickly as she could, Victoria ducked under the horrific person and tried to bend it's arm behind it's back in order to bring it to it's knees. Instead, the stringy flesh of the arm gave way to her minimal amount of pressure and it popped off at the elbow. She inspected the arm and was quite surprised to find that the creature was unaffected by any pain or loss of limb. The smaller creature had meanwhile come running up behind her and had clamped it's teeth around her backpack.

Victoria spun around and leaped into the air, delivering a powerful spinning kick mid-air to the hungry zombie. Half of it's chest went flying off onto the ground, spurting horrible black and green goo as it skidded to a stop. She landed and then spun again on her heels, quickly sweeping the legs out from underneath the larger hostile one-armed corpse. It's knees could not handle the power of her kick, and the creature fell apart at the legs, it hissed and growled as it fell backwards onto the broken pavement. Victoria stood and turned again to face the smaller of the two creatures, and looked on in genuine shock as the creature, with it's chest opened and bleeding, and it's head sitting at an unnatural angle to it's body, advanced on her again.

More hisses and screams filled the air, and in an instant twelve more of the creatures were racing out of the darkness towards her. She raised her fist up to stop the advance of the broken smaller creature, and was taken by surprise from behind by the legless one-armed corpse behind her. It grabbed her right ankle and pulled itself towards her leg, snapping it's jaws and snarling. She brought her right leg around, swinging it up towards the smaller off balance creature, smashing the two of them together in a gooey mess. The two fell into each other, writhing and still hissing, with broken skulls and missing limbs. Victoria shook her right leg violently, to dislodge the creatures hand hold on her ankle. The arm finally let go, and it flew up into the air, landing at the feet of the advancing hordes. The twelve had become twenty, all within a matter of seconds.

Victoria calculated that she could likely withstand an attack from these creatures, so long as they weren't any more powerful than a normal human being, but with twenty or more hostile creatures, it was very possible that she might be torn apart. That would be very annoying, and worse, if she were constantly to have her body chewed upon by the hungry zombies it would make self repair very difficult to complete. She weighed her options and then in the blink of an eye, turned on her heels and took off at full speed towards the glow of the lights.

The horde followed her, hissing and scrambling over the burnt out trucks and cars that littered the street that they and Victoria now raced down. Victoria ran at a speed far too high for the creatures to keep up with. She hopped over an entire semi trailer with little effort and continued onto the pavement without any loss of momentum. At a top speed she could reach above forty miles per hour, enough to outpace any human being. Human beings got tired of running, but as Victoria turned back to see, the corpses did not lose energy so easily. They scrambled and fell over the trailer, sloshing around on the ground before returning to their feet and continuing the chase.

She turned and raced towards the lit up sky, near the ruins of the college district. Victoria could not understand why these particular threats had not been spoken of in the Enclave's database, and she began to wonder what other mutations might still be unknown to her. Perhaps even, there were worse things in the wasteland besides the ever present deathclaws? Her bare feet smacked against the pavement in rhythmic bursts, and her backpack rattled with her movement, but above all else the screams and hisses of the masses behind her was what filled the night air. Victoria rounded a bend, and came across the charred and half eaten remains of a human being.

She ran by it and quickly stored the passing image to her memory, taking in all of it's details as she continued her escape. It had been a young woman, just into her teenage years- probably not much older than fifteen or sixteen years of age. That was a very troubling detail, if someone so young had been left out in the wastes to die like that. She stopped in her tracks and turned back to the corpse of the dead girl. Somewhere, someone in the wasteland- and probably nearby, mourned the death of the young girl.

The hisses and screams came around the bend too, and soon the horde would be upon her. That didn't seem to matter as much now, not to that remaining human part of Victoria's brain. She walked back to the girl and looked into her opened and dried eyes, that stared back past her, somewhere off into distance. Victoria knelt down and took off her back pack, and opened it's main pocket. She pulled from the pack a very ornate blanket, a blanket that had been presented to her some two hundred years ago, and she placed the blanket over the corpse. She slowly and carefully began to wrap the girl in the blanket and then tied off the ends. Victoria rose to her feet just in time to see the first zombie like human come running down the street.

Her hope had been to avoid violence altogether. To only administer physical pain to those factions that perpetuated suffering in the wasteland, to only terminate those who themselves had terminated indiscriminately. Even these poor monsters running at her, they had once been human beings. What had happened to them was not their fault, but in the end they too would have to be removed. It seemed to Victoria, that the wasteland would not allow for peaceful resolutions, for an escape route for anyone. Whether they ran from tyranny, or from monsters, the people of the wasteland would never get away fast enough.

Victoria reached into her back pack once more and pulled out an antique from days gone by. It's shining barrel had an enscription on it that read, '2049 national champion, Vicki Mitchell.' An ornate design of ribbons was etched into it all the way down to the spinning chamber of the old nickel colt. She gripped the gun by it's white ivory handle grip in her right hand, and spun the chamber open. She reached once more into her bag and pulled out a number of bullets, placing the heavy metal cylinders into the jacket pocket on her makeshift dress. She spun the barrel closed, and brought the gun back up to the advancing twenty corpses.

"I'm sorry." Said Victoria, as she took aim at the first six heads. The loud gun fire blasted throughout the area, and the nickel plated Colt SAA .45 LC, 7.5 inch sounded more like a high speed machine gun than a pistol. It had been customized by a man once honored as the fastest gun in the world, with his own patented coil spring mainspring installed into it. Victoria had won the 2049 shooting competition that had been named after the man, taking home first prize quite easily. The win had left a bad taste in her mouth however, as her cybernetic abilities were a definite factor in her shooting prowess. Her speed had gone unmatched, and her aim was precise. More precise than the android opponent that had gone up against her, much to the chagrin of Robco. Her rate of fire had not decreased with time, nor had her lethal precision.

The first six heads evaporated into a black and green mess, looking like shattered watermelons and balloons. Victoria popped the chamber open again, and reloaded the bullets quickly by dropping the bullets perfectly into the spinning barrel. The reload and subsequent second volley of fire took less than 3 seconds, and six more heads vanished. The hisses and screams were silenced completely, twelve seconds later. One last corpse limped towards her, over the pile of bodies that now lined the street. It had two heads, both snapping furiously and hissing, with two smashed together bodies that seemed to be stuck to each other. Victoria sighed out and emptied her barrel into the the last two heads of the creatures that she had met before.

Her first few meetings of the residents of the wasteland were not going to plan. She replaced her trophy gun back into her pack, and then closed it up again. She situated herself with her pack and jacket, and then lifted the corpse of the girl into her arms. Much of the girl had been eaten, but her face had for the most part been spared by whatever flames had touched the rest of her. She walked calmly with the body as big as her own in tow, trying very hard not to think about the obvious. The zombies wouldn't have cooked her before eating the parts that they wanted.

The walk to the gates of the settlement had been very uneventful thereafter. When she reached the town of Nicksta, she was met with the realization that Nicksta was a name made out of the remaining letters on Kinnick Stadium. The bright stadium was lit up, powered by an unknown source, and it's massive entrance ways had been blocked off. As Victoria crossed the parking lot, and passed a few last burnt out automobiles, a bright spotlight clicked on and focused on her. She looked back up into the light and saw five men in football helmets and shoulder pad armor looking back down at her. A huge mechanical door opened up at the stadium entrance, it had looked like a pile of metal and debris, but had in fact been a secured gate. It rose to it's open position and three more men in football regalia came out, with assault rifles strapped to their sides. The foremost man came trotting up to Victoria quickly and inspected her up and down.

"Who are you?" He asked, staring at her face. His expression seemed strange to Victoria, as if he somehow didn't believe in her existence. "Where did you come from?" He asked further.

"My name is Victoria." She said, as she handed the blanket containing the girl towards the man. "I came from Cedar Rapids." She continued. The man stuggled with the remains of the girl, but seemed to understand right away what was wrapped in the blanket. The two other football helmet wearing men joined them.

"Cedar Rapids? Where's that?" Asked the man with the girl in his arms. "Did you cross the dead road to get here? Are you okay?" He asked. Victoria nodded.

"Cedar Rapids is the city that was north of here." She said, pointing in the direction of the old ruins. She turned back to the man, who had opened up the blanket. He carefully inspected the girls face. "I found that body on the way here." Victoria added.

"Thank you." Said the man, with his voice sounding choked. He turned away from Victoria and started to run back inside of the stadium. One of the other men took his helmet off and looked down her bare feet and the black goo around her fists and jacket.

"Did the ghouls give you trouble?" He asked. "No one crosses the dead street at night... how did you get past them?" He asked, as the other man looked around the parking lot, seeming to become uncomfortable at the mention of the word ghouls.

"They chased me for a little while." Said Victoria. "Then they stopped." She added. The man with the removed football helmet smiled down at her.

"You must be pretty damn fast on those bare feet then." He said. He then placed the over sized helmet on Victoria's head, and patted it down into place. "Outstanding." He said.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

 **Burning man.**

The two men that escorted Victoria away from the dark parking lot were very energetic. The man who had placed his helmet upon her head was named Randall Frese, and his cohort, a rather jovial scratchy voiced middle aged man who would only give out his name as 'Pipes,' both escorted her into the great walls of the stadium, with the gates shutting firmly behind them. Victoria let her back pack drag behind her, using her free arm to carry the football helmet in the crook of her elbow, and dragging her stash of goodies by one strap with the other.

"What about a mom or a dad?" Asked Randall, as he turned back around to face Victoria. He had been jabbering with Pipes about the third man in the football gear, a younger boy named Josiah. Josiah had broken rank and fled with the found girl's body back into the heavily secured stadium. It was possible that he would face some kind of corrective action. Victoria looked back up at Randall and shook her head.

"They both died a long time ago." She said, with a slight frown. "I've been on my own for a while now." She added. Pipes turned around too, his glorious mustache bristled against the face guard of the black and gold helmet that he wore.

"Damn kid, you must be one tough cookie." He said. Victoria nodded and gave him an awkward looking wink.

"As tough as Oreos." She said. Pipes looked to Randall with a look of confusion on his face. Victoria spoke up, having realized her mistake. "I meant to say Hydrox." She said, with her odd monotone voice. Pipes nodded back to her and made a sort of acknowledgement with his mustache.

"I haven't seen a bag of Hydrox since I was a kid." Said Pipes. "I remember when the last bag here got auctioned off for over five hundred caps!" He added.

"I would have loved to have tasted just one." Said Randall, turning back to Pipes. "Hungry lads taste just like brahmin milk." He said with disgust in his voice. The three continued onward into the stadium, and Victoria marveled at the scene before her as they entered the stands of the large playing field.

"Well, here it is. Home sweet apocalypse." Said Pipes, as he placed his arm out for Victoria to see. Victoria continued to walk up to Pipes and looked around at the new world. The stands of the old Kinnick stadium were now leveled homes of the survivors of the nuclear war. Shanty yet somehow also sturdy looking shacks were arranged in descending order down the bleachers and stands that surrounded the old field. Rusted out hovels were lit up in the night, with small beams of light poking out of bits of metal that had rivets and patches in it. Some little shacks had lively noise coming out of them, laughter even. Puffs of smoke escaped some of the shacks, and the smell of cooked meat wafted up into the sky. Christmas lights lit the way between the some 50 to 60 houses and shacks, glittering with joyous colors and twinkling displays.

"I'll bet Cedar Rapids doesn't look like this." Said Randall, as he placed a palm on Victoria's back to move her along. They slowly made their way down the main steps of the stands, passing a few residents here and there, some crossing the steps and others climbing up to other levels of housing. Victoria noted all of the different races that had come together in the stadium. She looked up into the helmet of Pipes and ascertained that he was African-american in origin, at least in facial structure, whereas Randall was most likely Caucasian. The lines between the races had begun to fade in the new world, and Victoria found it a consolation, albeit a very small one, that the bickering over skin tone and cultural assimilation had seemingly ceased. Perhaps nuclear holocausts had a way of doing that.

"It really doesn't..." Began Victoria, as she turned her eyes away from the men. Her eyes came to rest on the field. The faint lines of yardage were still visible on the extremely dulled with age AstroTurf, but any reminder of the game was now replaced with a makeshift metropolis of shipping containers and scrapped together buildings. From the home team entrance, to the visitors entrance, the tall metal structures stood, rising up to the height of the stadium walls. A network of trellises and walkways connected the buildings, lit up by more Christmas lights and hanging bulbs. The walkways were teaming with life, drunken wastelanders passed each other by with greetings or the clinking of beer bottles.

The inner field town was mostly business oriented, and Victoria found comfort in the knowledge that the survivors had recommenced free enterprise and capitalism so soon after the devastating blasts of nuclear warfare. Soon, she along with Randall and Pipes all came to the metropolis and made there way up a hanging metallic ramp, made of chain-linked fencing. The three of them passed by a clothing shop that was just closing up for the night, and two women looked out at them as they went up the noisy ramp. A makeshift deli was even near the top of the buildings, with hungry patrons hurriedly eating their nightly meals of mole rat meat and wild dog legs. Everything was very much in line with the Enclave's initial database, except for one thing.

Victoria came to a stop outside of the makeshift deli and watched as an old man drank down a bottle of water. Randall stopped with her, and motioned for Pipes to continue onward. The two stood there, with Randall watching Victoria as she inspected the thirsty man's actions. The old man noticed the young girl in front of him and then smiled. He held out the bottle towards her.

"You thirsty young'un?" He asked, water dripping down his chin. "There's plenty more where this came from." He said. Victoria shook her head, and instead scanned it's contents from a distance. Then she looked up to the old man. The water was devoid of harmful radiation, and the old man was well into his 60's. She smiled back to the man and then turned to look up at Randall.

"The water is clean?" She asked. Randall smiled and urged her onward again. The two walked up the rest of the way on the ramp as Randall spoke.

"Aqua Pura. Straight from the Capital Wasteland." He said, as they both walked up. Victoria looked up at the man who was likely in his thirties. His clean shaven face and healthy looking skin spoke much to his access of radiation free supplies. He turned his eyes towards Victoria and raised an eyebrow. "Tell me you've at least heard of the Capital Wasteland?" Asked Randall. Victoria shook her head.

"I don't know too much about it. I know it's where the president used to live." She said. Randall smirked and the two came to a stop at the front of the top most building, lit up from the inside with many people milling around in it's noisy room. Randall turned and leaned forward on the railing of the building, looking out over the darkness past the stadium walls. Victoria joined him, standing beside him and looking out over the dark city ruins. She switched her vision to low light, and saw many destroyed buildings and homes. A few of the 'ghouls' also wandered the broken sky scrapers and college dorms.

"There was a hero born to that place. A great man. They call him the Lone Wanderer." Said Randall. Victoria nodded and listened intently to him, staring up at him as he spoke. "About six months ago, a line of merchants came through here, escorted by members of the Brotherhood of Steel. They brought medics with them, a few scientists... and he was here too." He said.

"Why did they all come here?" Asked Victoria as she handed Randall's football helmet back to him. Randall took it back and held it in his hands, looking down at the old scratched up paint job on it's surface.

"Well, the Brotherhood was looking for any tech that might be in the old city. We already had plenty of medical supplies from the old university to trade with them, but they were on some kind of errand in particular. They cleaned it out of most of the ghouls and just about all of the hostile gear heads in hospital." Said Randall. Victoria nodded.

"Bad robots." She said. Randall smiled and looked back over the darkness of the world outside.

"As bad as they can get. The scientists wanted to get access to a place called Rockwell, or Rock town? They said it was somewhere here in Iowa. They never did find it. The wanderer though, he just came along to help. Folks said that his father was a scientist that led a team in the Capital Wasteland- he was able to clean the waters of the Potomac river before he passed on." Said Randall. He stared down at his helmet once more, and then turned to look down at Victoria. "The Lone Wanderer he's the one that adjusted our water purifier, not for caps, not for information or anything. He just fixed it, like some kind of wasteland Jesus. I wish he were still around." Said Randall.

"He turned your radioactive water into wine." Stated Victoria. Randall gave her a nod and then put his head to the side. He looked down at her, taking her in some strange fashion.

"You have a kind of weird accent. I don't want to be rude, but is that how everyone in Cedar Rapids talks?" Asked Randall, as he went to put his helmet back on top of his head. Victoria shook her head.

"It's a speech impediment." She said, rather abruptly. Randall slapped his helmet into place and then patted her on the head.

"It was just a question, sorry." Said Randall. "Let's go meet the coach." He told her, as he motioned for her to follow him. He left towards the curtained entrance of the topmost building of the field metropolis, and Victoria followed him in. The small crowd of people in the building turned at once when Victoria entered the room, as two very large German shepherd dogs began to bark and snarl at her.

"Hey! Stop it!" Yelled a man in a football helmet, as he jerked on one of the dog's leashes. The dogs both stood in a ready position, following Victoria's movement through the room. Still snarling and snapping, they were led out of the building by the enraged handlers. "What the hell is the matter with you!..." Began one of the handlers as they led their dogs outside.

"Goddamned dogs are probably just brain fried." Said Pipes to Randall, as he and Victoria came to his side. "Barking to warn us about a four foot tall child, whoopty doo." He added, motioning with his finger in the air, making a little circle. The small crowd of about sixteen people opened up to show two people kneeling over the body of the girl. A man sat in a great chair also, behind the body, wearing an old black polyester jacket and big round black sunglasses. The jacket had the old team logo on it's chest. The man in the chair motioned for two football guards to move the two grief stricken people along. They were taken to the corner of the room where yet one more person stood, a woman adorned in white.

"Come forth, child of Cedar Rapids. I am Fry, coach of the Hawks." Said the man in the sunglasses. His voice was gruff and serious in tone. Randall nudged Victoria to go forward, and she did so. She came to a stop in front of the body and looked down at it. Many trinkets had been laid upon the blanket, ranging from toys to bottle caps and paper flowers. Victoria looked up to the serious looking older man in the chair. "You've done us a great favor by bringing her back to us. Please sit and talk with me." Said the coach, as he beckoned for a seat. Another football guard came running out from behind the small group of people in the room, and sat an old folding chair down behind Victoria before promptly leaving back into the crowd.

"Thank you." Said Victoria, as she sat in the old metal chair. The coach leaned forward in his chair and inspected Victoria with a scrutinizing look. His sunglasses reflected her face, and she looked back at him. Victoria also returned a scrutinizing look, scanning the Coach's body language and level of physical fitness. He, like most of the people she had seen in the stadium, were in basically good levels of fitness, but just slightly malnourished. The coach sat back and put his hands on his knees, obviously deep in thought. Finally he spoke again.

"You are not a child. Forgive me for calling you that. What is your name, traveler?" Said the coach. A small murmur went through the crowd and the coach raised his hand to shush them all.

"My name is Victoria." Said Victoria, as she tilted her head to the side. "That's okay, I'm not offended." She added, looking again at the steel like body language of the coach. He gave a singular nod and then motioned to the girl's body.

"Victoria, this girl, her name was Noel. She was a child, not so much older than you, one that ventured out into the wastes to try to find help for our community." Said the Coach. "She snuck out three nights ago, looking for the Brotherhood of Steel. We couldn't find her in time to stop her." He said.

"Why did she leave?" Asked Victoria. "Why does your community need help?" She asked. The Coach sat back again.

"Because not long after the Brotherhood of Steel came to us, half a year ago, an army of raiders quickly followed upon their departure. They are the worst roving gang of cannibals and senseless murderers that we have ever seen, and they have attacked us at least twice a week ever since they came." Said the Coach. "They take the youngest women for their own, and they eat the men that fight back. It looks like they take the children too..." He said, lowering his head on the last words.

"You have weapons, you can defend yourselves." Said Victoria. The Coach took an audible breath and looked back up.

"We are not a town of warriors, Victoria. We are hunters and scavengers, but no match for those fiends." He said. Then he leaned forward. "Noel was nearly captured by the raider leader once, a man they simply call Burner. He has a gun of flames set upon his back, and a helmet of antlers atop his head. He is the most brutal man you could ever meet in this world, and I'm sure that this was his doing." Said the Coach. Victoria looked back down at the girl, and then over to the grieving man and woman in the corner.

"I'm sorry that she died." She said, turning back to look at the Coach.

"As am I." Said the Coach. "She did a very brave thing, she'll be honored in the halls of the Hawks. Please Victoria, I must ask you, how did you get past the ghouls of the dead street?" He said. Victoria tilted her head to the side and looked at the Coach.

"I out ran them, until they stopped chasing me." She said. The Coach looked back at her, and then gave her a single nod.

"Victoria, we would all welcome you into this community of ours. You can stay here with us so long as the walls allow..." Said the Coach. "We won't make you stay here against your will, but I have to tell you that venturing outside of our walls is no longer a safe course of action." He added.

"I was only planning on passing through, until tomorrow. I want to see the wasteland." Said Victoria, as she went to stand up from the seat. Another murmur went through the crowd, and the boisterous laugh of Pipes filled the room. The Coach raised his hand again.

"You want to see the wasteland?!" He asked, in disbelief. Victoria nodded quite happily. "There is nothing out there for you! What reason could you possibly have to want to see the wastelands?" The Coach regarded Victoria with a look of concern.

"I've been stuck in Cedar Rapids for a very long time." She said in her monotone voice. "I kind of want to stretch my legs." She added, getting up out of her chair. The Coach stood up too.

"Victoria, racer of ghouls and traveler of the blasted plains, you are a braver soul than I." Said the Coach, as he stepped forward. "My heart is heavy to even ask you this question, but in what direction do you plan to travel to?" He asked. Victoria shrugged.

"I'll go back north for a just a mile or so, then I'll try to reach Chicago." She said. More murmurs arose in the small crowd of people and the Coach motioned for one of the men in the football armor to join him. They chatted with each other quickly and then the armored man went to go speak with Pipes. Victoria looked around at the sudden conversations happening between all the people in the room and then turned back to the coach. "Why do you ask?" She asked back to him. The Coach looked very grim, and then adjusted his sunglasses.

"I'm not going to lie to you, if you try to leave tomorrow, we won't try to stop you. I'll encourage you to stay here until help arrives, but if you are truly set on leaving this place... we are going to use that to our advantage." Said the Coach. Victoria furrowed her brow.

"I don't understand what you mean by that." She said. "What kind of advantage would my leaving of the stadium present to you?" She asked. Pipes stepped forward and put a hand on Victoria's shoulder.

"Put me in Coach." Said Pipes. "I'll go north with Vicki, until I either find the Brotherhood of Steel, or the halls of the hawks." He said, somewhat dramatically. Victoria looked up to his full mustachioed face, that was beaming with pride.

"Put me in Coach!" Said another man in armor, as he stepped forward from one of the walls of the room. "I'll run to the south!" He exclaimed as he pounded a fist against his shoulder pads. Others stepped forward, proclaiming cardinal directions and victory for the hawks, until at last Randall came to Victoria's side.

"I'll run with you, Vicki." He said. Victoria huffed out ever so slightly. The rest of the guards hailed her name with some bravado, cheering for Vicki.

"No one really calls me that." She said. The Coach raised his hand up to the guards and the rest of the people in the room.

"Victoria, this is our final play. We have few left that are willing to leave the stadium, fewer still that will venture out into the wastes. These men, and you, are the last hope we have of salvation." He said. "Tomorrow when you choose to leave, we will send out our fastest men alongside you, in all directions. The raiders are strong in numbers, but they can't catch every man. They'll focus on one or two groups, but some of us will break through the line of scrimmage. Some of us can live to bring back help." Said the Coach. Pipes nudged Victoria on the shoulder.

"Here's the sick truth of it kid." He began. Victoria looked up to him as he spoke. "We're pretty sure that Burner would go after you the most. He's got worlds of problems up in that melon of his." Said Pipes.

"It's true. The raider leader would most definitely give chase to you, given the choice. He has taken many of our girls, a few around your age. We have yet to find their bodies, Noel is the first." Said the Coach. "The men that they take are always found. Chewed upon. Dried out. Burnt." He added.

"So while the raiders are chasing me, you'll use it as an opportunity to run for help? From the Brotherhood of Steel?" Asked Victoria, as she turned her attention back to the Coach.

"Yes. This is our last bid for survival. It won't be long until our numbers grow smaller and smaller, and they get brave enough to storm the gates. They'll get in eventually." Said the Coach. "We won't let you go alone." He said, motioning to the men beside her.

"We'll provide some cover fire for you." Said Pipes. "If you're really fast enough to out run those godforsaken ghouls, then you just might stand a chance against the raiders too." He said.

"If you stand your ground against the raiders, you might not live through it." Said Victoria as she looked back and forth between Randall and Pipes. Pipes hit his shoulder pad armor again.

"I've had plenty of days. I want my daughter to have many more too." He said with a nod.

"Hawks live on." Said Randall, as he also pounded his shoulder pad.

Victoria quickly calculated the odds of the settlement's survival against the odds of the settlement's destruction. The unfortunate variable of the settlement's now clean water supply was a deciding factor, and it was likely the main reason why the raiders that they spoke of harassed them so often. Clean water source, and a renewable source of human meat via the survivors that lived in the stadium, had made these people an everlasting target that was too enticing to ignore. The numbers finalized, and it was decidedly bad for the residents of Nicksta.

"I'll help you." Said Victoria. The small crowd of people and all of the football guards let out a small cheer. "Do you know how many raiders there are in total?" She asked. The Coach sat back down in his chair, resting his aching old legs.

"They are at least forty strong, but the Brotherhood of Steel can drive them away." Said the Coach. "We know that they went east of here, looking for another settlement on the Mississippi river. The raiders have set up camp directly in the path." He added. Victoria nodded.

"That's why Noel was trying to sneak around to the west." She stated. The Coach nodded. Victoria looked around as the rest of the room stared back at her.

"We have sent many couriers and hunters out to their deaths, just to try to go get help, but the raiders are always there the next morning... outside. Eating..." Said the Coach, trailing off with a face full of disgust. "But if you can out run ghouls and cross the wastes... you can out run the raiders as well, or even go unnoticed!" He said.

"I'm hoping for unnoticed." Whispered Randall, as he winked down at her. Victoria nodded.

"I'll try my best." She said. The Coach smiled and then turned to one of the men in the football helmets, speaking to him briefly, before turning back to Victoria.

"Thank you Vicki." Said the Coach. Victoria put her hands on her hips and furrowed her brow again. "Please let Nicksta show you some hospitality."

* * *

The room that had been provided to Victoria was actually quite luxurious. It had a very nice comfortable looking bed (of which she wasn't going to get any use out of) a personal bathroom, and even an antique radio. A boombox to be precise. She had been escorted to her room in the makeshift metropolis's hotel by Randall, whom had told her of a late midnight dinner that would be served at the bottom of the metropolis before leaving. Now standing alone in the room, Victoria took real stock of the situation regarding not just the people of Nicksta, but of the wasteland in general.

Her assertion that life in the wasteland was difficult had been an understatement to say the least. These people were continuously tortured by the spoils of the great war. Victoria, or Vicki, as everyone was calling her, much to her distaste, laid her back pack on the bed and opened it up. She counted out her remaining bullets for her prize colt, and found that she only had 36 bullets left. Her plan had been to exchange the gun for some currency, but it now looked as though she may have need for the gun.

She put her 36 bullets back and then pulled out a simple nightgown and a spray bottle of cleanser. The personal shower was dinky, but so was she, and as Victoria stripped down from her slightly gore covered jacket she was able to see just how bad her feet looked. They were caked in the green and brown hues of the ghoul goo. She stuck her tongue out in a learned expression of disgust and climbed into the shower to get to work in cleaning herself off. She spritzed herself with the foaming chemicals in the bottle and waited for them to eat away at the grit and grime on her 'skin.'

The skin that didn't age, or sweat, or tan, or even ever scar over, was one of the many differences that she had to deal with. Although she understood that it felt mostly real to the average person, she knew otherwise. It was a synthetic mess that covered her alloy and plastic insides, of which she had often thought about removing if not just for a short while. Just to see how fast it could grow back. She'd leave that curiosity for another time, perhaps.

Victoria scraped her legs and arms with a steel brush and continued to stand in the shower, until it was finally time to turn on the water. The goo of the undead humanoids washed down the drain of the shower, to join the rest of the filth in the sewers of the old world. Everything now was pure mimicry, from the use of normal bar soap to the washing of her unreal hair. Why she continued on with the sham, Victoria could never quite pinpoint. Maybe it did bring some form of comfort... the action of it- normal human life. Or maybe it was just habit. Like the ghouls that still roamed the university hospital, looking for treatment, or the ones that had been waiting for their burnt out bus to depart. She scrubbed the last bits of ghoul from between her toes and stopped the water.

She stepped out of the shower and inspected her reflection in the mirror of the tiny bathroom. Her face looked too clean again. Nothing like the people of the wasteland. Nothing like a person that might have ended the lives of fourteen people earlier that day. Victoria left the bathroom, with a dirty towel on her head and an old raggedy bath robe wrapped around her body, and headed for the door of the hotel room. She heard Randall's voice along with Pipes, and the voice of a third person all conversing about the boy named Josiah. She waited until the stopped talking and then opened the door a sliver to see the three going their separate ways. Randall walked towards her door while Pipes and a woman in a black and yellow outfit left down the stairs at the end of the short hallway.

"Randall!" She whispered out of the door. Randall turned to see her and then walked up to the door.

"What is it? What's wrong?" He asked. Victoria opened the door and shook her head.

"Nothing's wrong, but I hoped you would talk to me." She said. "In private." She added. Randall shifted uncomfortably and then gritted his teeth.

"You can talk to me out here-" He began to say. Victoria put a hand on her hip and tilted her head to the side with a furrowed brow.

"Well, okay." Said Victoria. "I want to talk with you about the Brotherhood of Steel." She said. Randall raised an eyebrow and nodded.

"Alright. What about them?" He asked, looking a little less tense.

"Why do you think that the Brotherhood of Steel will help Nicksta with the raiders?" Asked Victoria. "If you don't have anything left to trade with them, and don't have any pre-war technology that they would want, why would they come to your aid?" She asked. Randall became even more uncomfortable looking than he had been and put a finger over his mouth to shush Victoria. He entered her room and quietly shut the door behind him.

"What do you mean?" Asked Randall at an almost whispered tone. "Of course they'll come help, they're the Brotherhood of Steel!" He said. Victoria looked up at him and crossed her arms. His voice stress patterns and his body language, coupled further with the microexpressions that he made upon speaking told her that he didn't believe that they would come.

"You don't believe that." Victoria stated simply. "I can tell." She said. Randall huffed out and made his way to the center of the room.

"It's all we have left." He said, as he looked out of the window of the hotel room. One by one, lights were extinguished in the shanty shacks of the stadium stands, and the makeshift field metropolis creaked and groaned in the warm quiet night air. Randall focused on a single light, up near the top of the stadium wall. One last homemade candle that still remained as a vigil for the recently lost Noel. "There's no one else that we could turn to." He said as he plopped down on the bed, looking down at the floor.

"What do you mean? Aren't there any other settlements near here?" Asked Victoria. "You could ban together and form a militia." She added. Randall looked over to her.

"Apart from this Cedar Rapids place that you've been talking about? No." He said. Then his eyes lit up. "Do you think that you could talk anyone from there into coming down to help us?" He asked. Victoria gave him a tiny frown.

"I don't know if you'd like any of my friends." She said. By tomorrow morning, there would over three hundred of her machines busy with the work of gathering resources from the ruins of Cedar Rapids, in order to replicate more machines. Victoria thought about the prospect of ordering five of the machines to her, to simply remove the raiders, but she wondered about the reaction from the people of Nicksta. "I could ask them though." Victoria said, as she sat down next to Randall.

"Well, it's a thought at least." He said. His spirit had turned glum, and he stared at the metal flooring, apparently looking for an answer in the raised pattern of the steel sheets. "Someone has to be out there." Said Randall. Victoria nodded.

"The Lone Wanderer." She said. Randall huffed out and continued to stare at the ground. "Maybe he would help?" She asked.

"Sometimes I think that those damned raiders followed him here." Said Randall. "We never had trouble like this until the Brotherhood showed up. It's like they're vultures or something. Picking up the scraps left behind." He said. Victoria remained silent for a while and then removed the dirty towel from her hair.

"That sounds like a reasonable observation." She said at last, as she laid the towel down on her knees. "What does Pipes think?" She asked, as she turned to look at Randall. Randall kept his head down, but his eyes had shifted to the window again.

"Pipes believes in the halls of the hawks. He'll do anything that the Coach says to do." He answered. Victoria nodded.

"Are the halls of the hawks like heaven?" She asked. Randall turned his attention back to Victoria.

"Heaven? Yep. I guess so." He said, thinking on it for a while. "I don't know what I believe... I just don't want everyone to get shot up by a bunch of wasteland assholes." He added, as he got back up to his feet. Victoria stayed on the bed.

"That's a good goal to have." She said, with a nod. Randall smiled at her for a brief second and then scratched the back of his head, feeling at a scar that had been there since his childhood days. A small lump where a steel ball bearing had hit him, as he had tried to get away from some bullies in the stadium locker rooms. Victoria looked at the expression on his face and stored it to her memory, and then began to run a search on similar facial expressions. She failed to find a correlation and then turned her body towards him, fully focused on his face. "Why do you look like that?" She asked. Randall snapped out of his thoughts and looked back at her.

"What?" He asked. "What do you mean? What do I look like?" He asked back to her.

"You were looking at me, but looking far away too." Said Victoria. "You looked like you were bored." She said. Randall scoffed and shook his head dismissively.

"Ah, I just do that sometimes. Forget about it. Forget about what I said about the Brotherhood too, they'll come alright." He said, sounding renewed in his conviction. "There's still good people out there, it's just hard to remember that every now and then." Said Randall, as he went to leave. Victoria followed him to the door and smiled as he opened it.

"Maybe I'll see you down at the dinner." She said to him as he exited the door. He gave her one last silent nod and then left. Victoria closed the door behind him and turned back towards the window. She didn't have any reason to believe that the Brotherhood of Steel was any different than the Enclave. Their actions in Nicksta could have easily been construed as a false show of compassion and unity, in order to find the quarry that they searched for. Rockwell aerospace was now heavily guarded, and anyone that would try to gain access to the under building would not have a good chance of surviving long enough to escape.

The four legged multi tentacled spider-like faceless androids that now roamed the increasingly flat and clean ruins of Cedar Rapids would usher in a new age of control in the chaos of the wasteland, someday soon enough. How the survivors of the wasteland would receive their new mechanized life preservers would ultimately be affected by their first encounter with them, and she knew it. Diplomacy would have to be number one priority when it came to the wastelanders.

Victoria weighed the option of reorganizing her workforce south, into the city ruins of the old college town after the resources of old Cedar Rapids had been depleted. Such an action would double her android's numbers, and provide protection for the survivors in Nicksta. It did seem to be a tactically sound decision, to bring a regiment in. On the other hand, Randall did seem to hint that the robots of the old world were not looked upon with too much tolerance. Maybe a small group of ten androids, stationed at the city limits wouldn't be a terrible idea, just as a very last resort should the raiders attack her.

Victoria opened her back pack again and took from it a tablet device, much different from anything else to be found in the wasteland. She pointed the device out towards the window and waited for it to link up with one of the old battered satellites of the old world. Victoria had found very few still in orbit, most troubling was the fact that two of them still contained active nuclear war heads. Humanity really had been set on self destruction, from sea, by land, and above. She searched the night sky and finally bounced a signal off of one still barely orbiting television satellite, non-functional in it's original intent, but still usable for her needs.

She uploaded instructions to the far off android production facility and was met with an instant affirmation. Ten androids would immediately set out and await further orders. Victoria was pleased by the efficiency of the facility. Improvements had been made, now that human safety was no longer an issue on the factory floor. There were now, just two hours after the initial start up, 73 androids working at full capacity. She replaced the tablet into her back pack and then dressed herself in some provided clothes. There was an odd moment when Victoria looked at herself in the mirror on the wall, and saw that her old dingy pre-war dress was one that she had been considering to purchase just before the United States had annexed Canada. She decided that she didn't much care for it after all. It clung too much to her waistline.

Victoria left the room and made her way out of the creaking hotel and out into the night. She walked down the chain link ramps to the restaurant at the bottom of the metropolis and entered into it's amber lit opened room. Pipes sat at the table with the woman that Victoria had spotted him with earlier, and she quickly ascertained that the woman was his daughter. She strolled up to the two of them and smiled.

"Hello!" Said Victoria, in as cheerful of a tone as she could manage. Pipes gently smacked his daughter on the shoulder and pointed to Victoria.

"There she is. Vicki the Burner bait." Said Pipes, in a slightly slurred way of speaking. His daughter grimaced and smiled down at Victoria. Pipes was teary eyed and focused on his tall glass of brown fluid.

"Hello Vicki!" Said the daughter. "I'm Alicia." She said with a wave. Victoria took a seat next to Alicia and then rested her hands on the long bar table in front of them.

"Hello Alicia." She said. Then she turned her face towards Pipes and his daughter. "No one has really called me that for a long time." Said Victoria. A sloppy looking man in an old paper hat walked out from behind a wall in the back of the restaurant with nasty looking roasted carcass on a tray. He set it down in front of Pipes and then leaned on the table.

"You better not puke this time, I ain't giving you no more refunds!" Said the man in the paper hat. Then the man turned towards Victoria. "What the hell do you want?" He asked, in a very impatient tone. Victoria shrugged.

"I don't even know what you're offering." She said. Alicia gestured to Victoria with her thumb.

"You better play nice cookie, this is the girl that's gonna run defense for the Coach tomorrow!" She said in a scolding manner. The man in the paper hat fumed and then settled his gaze on Pipes, who was beginning to pick at the roasted mole rat in front of him.

"Shit." He said, shaking his head. "She's just a kid." Said the man, looking more disheartened than angry. Alicia scowled at the man.

"She's just a kid that crossed dead street. I'd like to see one of you miserable old bastards even try it!" She said. Alicia turned to Victoria. "Don't listen to him, you're gonna make it." She said in a very definitive voice. Victoria nodded.

"I'll make it." She repeated back to Alicia. Alicia smiled back and then gulped down some of her own refreshment, probably alcoholic in nature. She put the empty glass down on the table and pushed her father's ribs with her elbow.

"You'll probably even get this old buzzard back in one piece." She said. Victoria looked at Pipes, who had made himself quite intoxicated. Then she looked back at Alicia, who was served another round of liquid by the begrudging man in the white paper hat.

"Why are you both drinking so much? Is it because you're scared of tomorrow?" Asked Victoria. Alicia laughed out.

"Girl, ain't you never eaten mole rat before?" She asked, staring wide eyed at Victoria. Victoria shook her head. "Well dig in, see how long you last without taking a drink." Said Alicia, as she broke off a strip of meat from the large rodent, and held it out to Victoria.

"Okay." Said Victoria, as she took the greasy flesh into her hand and inspected it. She was fully capable of ingesting just about any source of food, breaking it down into supplemental energy usage, but even her alloy 'stomach' turned as she looked at the meat with a closer eye. It was no wonder that these people looked slightly malnourished. Even the flies kept their distance from the local cuisine.

* * *

Victoria had not went into a sleep mode that night. She was very busy canvassing the area, collecting data on the residents and refugees of Nicksta. She had interviewed the late night wall guardians after midnight, gained access to the small treasure that was the closest thing to a library that the metropolis could offer, and in the morning she was able to observe the new morning rituals of the wastelanders. Nicksta was likely unique in comparison to most every other settlement, but Victoria wouldn't be sure until she visited more across the wide wasteland.

In the morning, almost every citizen left for the locker rooms of the stadium, with the men going to the home team room and the women to the visitor's room. There they had a communal shower, like a bath house of sorts, and general beautification for the day ahead. The women powdered their faces and underarms with an anti-fungal mixture, but she wasn't sure what the men did. It was a curious thing to watch, and Victoria made several corellations between the tribal lifestyles of the residents of Nicksta, and the lifestyles of the native Americans from many centuries before even her time.

The breakfasts were shared without question or greed, and great buckets of clean water were passed around as a sort of unification of the settlement, wherein all the attendees of the community breakfast would drink from the buckets. Victoria found herself quite at home with the survivors of Nicksta, and for a brief moment the whole ordeal had reminded her of her father. There was little time for remembrance however. Soon the meal, devoid of nasty mole rat meat, had ended. Men in football regalia took to the stands and did some new world praying, speaking to their resolve.

"It's time?" Asked Randall, as Victoria climbed the stairs towards the entrance of the stadium. Many other football armored men stood to their feet and turned to her. The residents of Nicksta stopped to look up at the brave men and the one defiant child at the doors to the wasteland. Word had traveled quickly that morning at breakfast, and the families of the men that had chosen to run for help that day, stood by- offering prayers up to grant protection to their sons.

"We should tell the Coach." Said Victoria, as she reached the final steps of the stands. She wore her back pack across her back, and the old world dress that had been provided to her by the grateful parents of the girl, Noel.

"He already knows." Said a gruff voice from behind her. Victoria turned to see the Coach climbing the stairs, accompanied by Josiah, the boy who had snatched up Noel's body from her arms the night before. The Coach adjusted his sunglasses and huffed out at the top of the steps. "Boys, form a circle." Commanded the Coach. The football armored runners all huddled together and joined arms around the Coach.

"What are we doing?" Asked Victoria, finally breaking an awkward silence that had fallen over the men. The Coach lifted his head to sky.

"This is our big ten boys. This is our rush into the end zone. Any man who needs to take to the bench needs to do it now!" Said the Coach. The footballers all grunted. "Mighty Hawkeyed, watch over us- witness our plays and cheer us on into your famed hall of glory. Strip from us our fear and guide us to the goals that you have set us upon. Set your wings upon the back of Victoria, that she may be beyond the blitz of the raiders. Bring us one last victory on this day." Said the Coach, as he pumped his fist into the sky. The other men grunted again and then began pounding on each other's helmets.

"To the end zone!" Screamed one of the men. The gates of the stadium started to open. Victoria looked to the Coach, who smiled back at her, kissing his finger and motioning it to her as if he were some kind of Pope.

"Godspeed, Vicki." He said to her, taking off his sunglasses. His eyes were teary, and his face was a little sullen. "Take my boys all the way home." He said. The gates clanked open and the men all began piling out of the stadium. Randall and Pipes ran up to Victoria.

"We'll be with you the entire way, Vicki!" Said Randall, as he strapped his helmet on tight. Victoria breathed in and decided to let the name go. "Just don't leave us in the dust unless those bastards attack! Then you give it everything you got!" He said, as he started to run sideways out the door.

"Come on, we've got you!" Said Pipes as he started to take off. Victoria nodded and she took off like a bolt, whipping past Randall as she went. The men cheered as they all ran in groups, in separate directions away from the stadium. The Coach lifted his arms in the air and gave out a cheer too, before the gates closed back up.

"Ha ha!" He laughed out. "Just like the wind!" He shouted. The doors slammed closed, and Pipes looked over to Randall with a surprised look.

"Damn! Didn't think I was getting that old, but you might have to leave me to the dogs!" He said as they both took to a full sprint. Victoria kept her speed in tandem with the two men behind her, not wanting to leave them too far behind. The three of them made their way past a few broken streets and then headed north, on a different path than what Victoria had come from. The run was without any incident from the old city all the way out to the ruined highway out of town. Randall smiled under his helmet. Maybe the raiders had pissed off on the wrong day? The trio ran at least a mile and half before trouble presented itself. They crossed over an old crumbling overpass, and heard gun shots towards the southeast. Pipes huffed out as he ran. "Keep going! Don't slow down!" He said, pained from the exertion.

Victoria looked off into the distance and zoomed in on the wastes to the southeast, where she saw a band of ten raiders firing upon some of the football armored men. They took cover behind some old buildings, while the raiders closed in. She turned her attention back to the road ahead and cranked her sensors up to their highest settings. She heard the rattling of guns and the heavy footfalls of men off to the distant northwest and motioned for the two men behind her to follow her down a steep slope. Randall and Pipes struggled to keep up with her, but obediently slid down the slope alongside Victoria. They all reached the bottom and Victoria turned around while still running north.

"They're trying to ambush us, we have to cut across to the old mall!" She told them. Pipes wheezed and nodded, and Randall looked around quickly, wondering how she could possibly know where they were coming from. A few more minutes of jogging, and the raiders made themselves known. They crashed out of some dense housing rubble, and began to fire on the three of them. Victoria turned and looked at Randall, who was bringing his gun up to his shoulder. Pipes had already brought his up too.

"Go on kid! Get out of here! You did your part!" Shouted Pipes, as he turned around and opened fire. Randall winked at Victoria readied his old used up assault rifle.

"There's still good people out there. Remember." He told her, just before turning around and joining Pipes in the fire fight. Victoria frowned. She had a strong urge to stay and protect the two men, but she had a prime directive. The other footballers were still in the 'game', and Victoria could still help them achieve their goal.

"I will!" Said Victoria, as she turned and continued onward. She blasted off towards the north east, and heard multiple shots zing past her. She turned her attention just briefly to the raiders, and saw the unmistakable figure of the man called Burner.

"Come on girlie! I got a present for ya!" Screamed out a mo-hawked dirty man. Burner slammed the man's gun down to the ground, and then pointed to Victoria.

"Bring that one to me!" He yelled out from underneath his gruesome mask. "Alive!" The fifteen raiders that had ambused the trio now split up, and while five of the raiders continued to fire on Randall and Pipes, the other ten including Burner now came after Victoria. Randall and Pipes were pinned down by the fire of the other five, laying low in a small rocky shallow. Randall lifted his gun up and randomly fired at the ten other raiders. He caught one and she fell to the ground in a heap. Another of the raiders spun around and aimed his hunting rifle at Randall and shot him in the side.

Victoria heard him scream out and she turned just in time to see him roll over into the shallow, bleeding but still alive. The raiders stood no chance of catching her, and they knew it.

"Shoot her knees out! I want her for my collection of little wastelander whores!" Screamed out Burner. At this, Victoria came to a dead stop. She turned abruptly and faced the gang of raiders dead on. Burner smiled at her through broken and rotten teeth. "I don't need her legs to work!" He shouted, sounding very pleased with himself.

This had complicated Victoria's choices. She had understood his words as a possible admission that the women and children that he had taken were still alive. If they were alive, then they could be rescued. Victoria weighed her options and very quickly formulated the best course of action to take in order to rescue any survivors of the raider gang. She put her hands up. One of the raiders laughed out.

"What happened? You run out of steam?" He asked in a mocking tone. Burner lit his horrid looking flamer. It sparked to life and it shot a flame high into the air above Victoria. He smiled at her again, with his green gum line and yellowed slimy teeth.

"Lookie lookie, we caught us a cookie." He said, as the raiders closed in around her. Victoria remained still as a female raider with a bald head wrapped her arms up in old telephone wire. Burner stepped forward after she had been secured, and pressed his flamer's muzzle close to her arm. "You should of kept runnin' shorty." He said, with a deep and disgusting laugh. The other raiders joined in and began to shove her forward, much to Randall's and Pipes's dismay.

"Damn it." Said Randall, as the five other raiders trained their hunting rifles and machine guns on them.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

 **The best barbecue in the mid-west.**

Burner commanded his raiders from a raised platform, in the middle of an old world junk yard. The encampment was surrounded by a sturdy wall of old decommissioned vehicles and cubes of compacted metals, and the dusty ground was disturbed quite easily. Clouds of dust and grit floated around throughout the junkyard, and the forty-six raiders of the encampment were hard at work shoving their new captives forward.

Pipes, who was smashed forward by the butt of a hunting rifle, tumbled onward and then fell to the dust covered ground in front of an old rail car shipping container. There were other people inside, looking out at him from between the slats of the old metal box. Something didn't add up at all about the raiders keeping captives alive, and as the raiders opened the box to shove him inside he was met with the undeniable truth of his new situation. The other people in the box, all eleven of them, were fitted with mechanized collars around their necks, a little too sophisticated in appearance to have been constructed by the savage raiders outside.

Victoria too, still wrapped up in telephone cable, noted some key factors that were out of place. For all of the murdering that the raiders were supposed to do, they sure did take an unusual amount of prisoners. Also, their leader, Burner, who held fast to the collar of her dress- hadn't burned anyone yet with his considerably lethal flame throwing device. Besides Randall, who was being dragged behind two raiders without any sympathy towards him, the majority of the captives taken by Burner's gang seemed to be undamaged.

Burner shouted more and more orders at the men and women that shoved the helpless wastelanders around into various boxes and enclosed pens, until the last of the captured footballers was thrown into the final box car. Burner let out a whoop and the rest of the raiders raised their fists and their rifles in the air with a mad cheer. Then he shoved Victoria forward for the raiders to see more clearly. Another cheer went through the crowd and they all started applauding.

"How much?!" Yelled Burner to the crowd. The crowd of raiders all yelled at once in reply.

"Never enough!" They all yelled. Pipes peered out through his new prison and tried to get a better vantage point. He could see Victoria and Burner up on a stage made of old crates and smashed together metal cubes in the distance, and closer to him was Randall, slumped over and in pain. Pipes gripped the metal of the box car and called out to Randall, but a raider came over to the box car and hit the metal with his baseball bat. Pipes stepped back from the slats and gripped the sides of his head. He wondered if any of his team had made it past the raiders.

"How much?!" Yelled Burner again, even louder. The crowd shouted out again at an even more energetic pitch. He threw Victoria down into the waiting arms of the cheering crowd, and she was tossed around like a tiny rag doll. She came to rest at the front of the stage, held in place by three brutal looking men. Burner raised his flamer muzzle into the air and shot a stream of fire over the crowd's heads. They all cheered collectively one last time and then fell silent as Burner removed his helmet made of bone. The middle-aged Hispanic man eyed the crowd with a look of disdain and then turned off his weapon. "You are all without a doubt, the saddest looking bunch of sonsabitches I have ever seen!" He shouted to them all. The crowd went wild again and Burner leaned down to deliver a few hand slaps to the raiders close to the platform.

"Do you know that girl out there?" Asked an older woman in the box car to Pipes. "I'm sorry, dear, I hope they don't hurt her too much." She said. Pipes turned to look at the older darker skinned woman in the box next to him. She had old peppered gray hair in dreadlocks down to her back, and a scar across her right cheek. He wiped the sweat from his brow and turned back to look out through the slats once more.

"Two thousand caps!" Shouted Burner, as he pointed to Victoria. The three men lifted her back up to him on the platform. He grabbed the top of her head and spun her around for the crowd to see. "These miserable runts won't even buy us a can of pork and beans!" He said as he pointed to another box car full of captives.

Victoria turned her eyes over to the box car in question and saw that it contained mostly women and children. There were one or two men in the mix, and she reasoned out that the raiders had ran out of places to put them. Another quick scan of the other two box cars revealed much the same information about the raiders and their activities. She had miscalculated the motives of the raider gang under Burner's control. The people in the box cars were well fed, and even looked clean. The captives were not food or entertainment for the mass of raiders but rather a source of income. She turned her head towards Burner and he glared back down at her.

"Are you slave traders?" She asked him. The crowd erupted into laughter and Burner shoved her down to her knees. He smiled down at Victoria and lit his flamer with the touch of a button.

"We're cattlemen." He said, as another raider came up to the platform with a large iron rod in his hands. The end of the rod was a flat surface, with two backwards english letters raised up. Burner held his flame to the makeshift branding iron and sneered. "And this here is the rodeo." He continued. The other raider lifted up Victoria's dress and moved the now red hot brand toward's her hip.

"Burner!" Shouted one of the female raiders from the back of the crowd. The man with the brand stopped and Burner pointed to the woman, the crowd of raiders parted so that he could see her better. She stood with Victoria's open back pack at her feet. "This girl's from the Enclave!" She yelled up at the platform. She lifted Victoria's tablet from inside the back pack, as well as the hat that she had taken from the vertibird. The crowd began to loudly chat and laugh and Burner knocked the raider with the branding iron away from Victoria.

"Open your mouth!" He demanded. He grabbed her by the jaw and forced her mouth open. He inspected it and flashed his nasty smile at her. "Well, well, well. Looks like we caught us a little runaway." Said Burner. The crowed erupted into many voices, yelling all at once.

"Five thousand caps!" Yelled out one raider. "Eight thousand!" Shouted another. "Fuck that, burn her!" Shouted yet a different one towards the front of the crowd. Burner turned towards the crowd and waved his arms at them violently. The raiders immediately silenced themselves, except for the woman at the back. She held up Victoria's nickel plated colt for the crowd to see.

"Holy shit, look at this!" She yelled. Burner shoved Victoria into the hands of the other raider on the platform, and hopped down onto the ground below. He strolled up to the woman and took the gun from her. Burner checked the revolver and tried to open it's chamber, but found that it was a gun the likes of which he had never seen. He gripped the barrel and found that it could be tightened or loosened, and he began to unscrew it. The woman held more nickel pieces of metal in her hand and showed them to Burner. Three other modified barrels and two different chambers were in the bag, but they were too complicated for Burner to work out how they worked exactly. He reattached the first barrel and tightened it, and a mechanical clicking sound emanated from the gun as the barrel found it's place. The metal of the gun looked seamless, as if the barrel and the body were one inseparable piece.

Pipes watched from the box car, squinting to see the gun better. He tried to work out what exactly was going on, but found the glare of the nickel plating on the colt to be too disruptive to his eyes. He smiled as Burner tried to pull the hammer back on the old world revolver, only to hurt himself in the process. Burner cursed and tossed the gun back to the female raider, taking the unusual tablet instead and then he made his way back to the platform. He climbed up to Victoria and grabbed her by the neck.

"What's the matter kid, your daddy wouldn't let you sign up with all the rest of the assholes? You wanna know what we did to the last group of stuck-up soldier boys that came around here?!" He hissed at her, as he threw the tablet down to the platform and stomped on it. "Coming in here with their high and mighty demands and their holier than thou bullshit?! You ain't worth the caps- you ain't even fit to clean the brahmin shit off of my shoe!" Yelled Burner. He shoved her off of the platform and into the dust below.

"Oh lord..." Began the old woman in the box car next to Pipes. He turned to see her sink to her knees and begin praying with her hands held up to her mouth. Randall began screaming as the raiders started dragging him away towards the platform. Burner hopped off of the platform too and grabbed Victoria's collar again, leading her in an angry fashion through the crowd of laughing raiders.

"Hey!" Yelled out Pipes, as they dragged the two away. "Stop it! Leave them alone! She's just a kid! Randall!" He shouted out as the raiders disappeared from his sight.

They smacked Randall in his face as he was dragged past them, and they kicked at his gunshot wound, making him yell out in agony. The raiders dragged them out into the open outside of the junkyard's walls. They all came to a stop outside of a great metal container, that had small holes at the top of it, and a large blackened area at it's bottom. The container sat at an odd leaning angle and had the overwhelming smell of charcoal and cooked flesh all around it. Plates, knives and forks were scattered on the ground around the box, and a few bones and discarded bits of cloth littered the area.

"You bastards!" Screamed out Randall, as four of the raiders lifted him up onto their shoulders. Burner pointed to the container and two other raiders opened it up. The large metal door opened with a grating sound, and the four men dropped Randall inside. He screamed out again as two of the men began stripping off his clothes and punching him in the abdomen. Burner grabbed Victoria by the throat and lifted her up off the ground.

"It's too bad. You could have been worth a lot of caps too." He growled at her, as he brought her close. "Damn, I might have bought you out myself. We could have had a hell of a time with you!" He said, as he shook her. The other raiders grabbed at Victoria's dress, but she kicked them away. Burner scowled at her and slammed her down into the container, shutting the doors behind her. Victoria landed at Randall's feet, and she stood back up, freeing herself of the cables around her. She jumped up to the doors just as the raiders on the other side locked it securely. Victoria gripped the door and peaked out from one of the holes near the top of the container, looking up at Burner.

"You still might." She said, in her strangely monotone voice. Burner stomped on the door, sending Victoria back down into the depths of the container. The raiders laughed and she could hear them climbing down the side of the lopsided metal box, stepping away into the distance. Then she heard Burner shout.

"Who's the best cook?!" He shouted. The raiders all replied in unison.

"Burner!" They all exclaimed.

"What?!" Shouted Burner back. The raiders shouted even louder.

"Burner!" They screamed.

"WHAT?!" Yelled burner at the top of his lungs. The raiders all screamed back.

"BURN HER!" They all screamed. Randall began screaming as the sound of Burner's flame thrower kicked on, and the temperature in the box began to rise. The flames stopped and the raiders all laughed and cheered as they walked away.

"Hope you like it medium well!" Yelled out the distant voice of Burner, as he too left the area. Victoria looked around and scanned the box. The metal was solid, and much too thick for her to punch through. The bottom of the box heated up further and further, and Randall tried to stand to his feet, huffing out in pain as he steadied himself against the walls of the container.

"Damn it." Said Randall, as he leaned back, away from the heat. "Why did you stop running?" He got out between his labored breaths. Victoria turned to him and looked at his wound. The slug that had buried itself in Randall's ribs would have to come out if he were to survive. She ripped the bottom half of her dingy dress off and then grabbed the coil of telephone cable from the bottom of the container. She snapped off some of the steel and wrapped the cloth around it.

"Bite down on this." She commanded. Randall's wiped his sweaty forehead and pointed down at the telephone cable.

"Holy shit, how did you d-" He began to ask. Victoria shoved the wad of cable and cloth into his mouth before he could finish.

"Bite down." She reiterated, in her calm but harsh monotone accent. Randall muffled out, and she pressed his jaw upward with her left hand so that he couldn't spit the cloth out. "This is going to hurt, a lot." Said Victoria. She placed her hand over his wound, and he began screaming and violently pushing her away.

Victoria scanned his body for the bit of lead, and she jammed her index finger and middle finger of her right hand into Randall's wound. He screamed out through the cloth and tried shoving her away, but Victoria over powered him. His screaming continued and Victoria eased her fingers to the slug and then she carefully pulled it out. It hit the metal of the floor and dark blood oozed out of Randall's side, his screaming lessened and he blacked out from the pain and the shock. She carefully grabbed the now hot end of the telephone cable and brought it up to the wound, then wasted no time in cauterizing the wound. Randall's head snapped forward and he screamed out, dropping the metal and cloth out of his mouth.

He slumped forward again and Victoria caught him carefully over her shoulder. She ripped off more of her dress and made a bandage around Randall's midsection. She inspected her work and found it more than acceptable, especially seeing as how the scope of her medical experience until that point had been entirely based off of old pre-war television shows. The beaten and bloodied naked man babbled something and then began to stir.

"I'm going to get us to the top of the container, you have to hold on." She told Randall. Randall nodded his head weakly and didn't protest. Victoria secured him over her shoulder and then she vaulted into the air with all of her ability. She reached out and clung onto one of the holes of the container with her one free hand, and then turned her face to see if Randall was awake. "You have to hold on to me, I have to let go of you." She said, without sounding very sympathetic to his plight. Randall gripped his arms around her neck and she instantly went to work.

She stuck her other hand into the same hole that had been cut out of the container, and then lifted her body along with Randall's up into a horizontal position. She brought her knees upward and placed her two feet into two separate holes close by. Randall coughed out and suddenly, he became fully aware of the situation.

"Whoa!" He yelled out, as he gripped onto her tighter. "What the hell!" He yelled, as panic set into his eyes.

"Hang on tightly." Demanded Victoria, as she began to strain. The metal of the container above them started to whine and creak, until finally Victoria's shaking arms ripped up just a tiny portion of the metal hole. "This is going to take a while." She said. The scent of cooking flesh filled Randall's nose, and he began coughing and gagging.

"Oh God! This isn't happening!" He sputtered out, nearly retching at the smell of the human meat all around him.

"Please don't do that." Said Victoria, as she continued to strain and push the metal sides of the hole away from each other. The metal buckled and creaked but would not give way. Victoria looked around at the walls of the container and saw other hand prints towards the top of the walls. Black greasy soot gradually rose from the bottom of the box to the top, and the smell of flesh did indeed permeate the air. She strained again and more of the hole opened up, several inches wider than it had been. "Breathe!" She demanded of Randall. Randall lifted his head to the hole and breathed in deeply for several seconds before lowering his head back down. The box got hotter and hotter.

The two of them continued that way for the better half of twenty minutes, with Victoria slowly but surely increasing the size of their eventual escape route, and Randall holding onto her for dear life. All the while the smell of the burnt and sizzling human meat filled the air around them. Randall went through a series of coughing fits but remained silent. Some of the smell of cooking flesh was now coming from him, but soon there was another feint smell.

Randall had only smelled the particular odor once in his life, when a fire had broken out in the old university hospital. A strange odor burnt off from some unseen source from within the halls and rooms of the vast building, and he remembered that the town doctor had said that it was the smell of plastics in the fire. Expensive polymers, that was what he had said. Randall lifted his head again and breathed out into the fresh air above, that was also becoming almost too hot to withstand.

"We're almost through." Said Victoria, as she wrenched more of the metal away from the hole. "I'm going to need more leverage, you're really going to have to hold on now." She said. Randall nodded and clung tightly to the girl, or whatever it was that was bending the metal above them. Victoria grabbed onto the sides of the hole tightly and then pushed her feet off of the other holes in the container. She spun her body around so that her feet could take hold on the other side of the ever widening opening of the giant human cooking oven, and then slammed her feet upwards. The container buckled and groaned, and Randall almost lost his grip in the whole process.

Randall was burning up, literally. His skin was now pink and blistering at his legs and feet, which dangled downward from Victoria's body. He began blacking out from the intense heat and his grip slightly lessened. Victoria brought her knees and elbows together, as she hung from the singular hole. With one full bodied massive push, she ripped the metal up and out of place, widening the hole large enough so the Randall could get through. He slipped and nearly fell off of her, only catching himself with her ripped up and torn dress.

"Get out." Said Victoria simply. Randall scrambled to try and get a hold of the metal, but it burned his flesh to the touch. Victoria shook her head. "Just stand on my chest." She commanded to him. Randall silently nodded and brought his partially cooked legs up and over her legs, and then tried to get to his feet. The pain was too much, and he couldn't stand.

"I can't!" He choked out, as he gathered his legs beneath him. "I can't! I'm sorry!" He said. Victoria let go of the hole with her feet, and Randall nearly tumbled down. She caught him with her legs by his arms, and then steadied him, slowly moving him back towards the top of the container until she was waist to waist with him.

"You're really not going to like this." She said. Randall coughed out and gagged, pained by the wound on his side and the knee that was pressing against it. "When you go airbourne, try to remain calm and loose. You'll have less chance of injury if you don't constrict your muscles." Said Victoria. Randall wretched up, and he tried not to get anything on her, but his stomach emptied itself all over Victoria's dress and legs.

"I'm sorry..." He sputtered out. Victoria sighed out, and shook her head. Then she brought her legs and Randall back, before bringing her legs back up into the air and releasing the man out through the opening. She heard the man hit the container with a thud and a complaint, and then the sound of him hitting the ground outside. Good enough, she thought, and then she too swung herself out of the container.

Victoria landed feet first on the hot metal container and then hopped down to the cooked man below. He was slowly turning himself over and smiling wide. She walked up to him and tilted her head in curiosity as to what he could possibly be smiling about.

"What's so funny?" Asked Victoria, with a furrowed brow. Randall coughed up and then turned himself over onto his back. He looked down at his abdomen, and the fork that was sticking out of his ribs.

"I'm done." He said, and then he let his head hit the ground behind him. Victoria grabbed the fork out of his flesh, and saw that it hadn't caused any critical injury to him. He began to giggle and cough some more.

"I don't get it." Said Victoria, as she tossed the fork away. She was not amused.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

 **The DEET**

Malloy sat down in the shade of the great boulder behind him and took a drink out of his canteen. With his radio unable to reach anyone, he had decided to head south towards the settlement of Nicksta. The monstrous little android had apparently murdered the entire team of soldiers and scientists that he had been traveling with. The door to the unusual vault located beneath the house on Washington avenue remained firmly sealed. No one was going to get in, and if anyone was left alive inside of the vault, they were surely not getting out anytime soon. In either case, Commander Dennis and William Hotchkiss were gone now. Removed from this world by some pre-war relics, machines that were capable of besting a fully decked out platoon of Enclave soldiers.

He had heard rumors about lifelike androids, up in the commonwealth, and he had heard tales of how dangerous they could be. It just seemed to Malloy, that the idea of something so small being able to overpower a full squad of Enclave soldiers was ludicrous. Surely what had done in Dennis and his men were the tall white androids that he had first spotted the night before. They hadn't seemed very threatening, but not every robot did at first. He would have to take all of this into consideration with his report, no matter how unbelievable it all was.

At the very least, no one was going to believe him if and when he were to return to the ever shrinking base back home. He took another swig from his canteen, and then threw an empty cigarette pack on the ground in front of him. He readied himself for the rest of the long walk to civilization and went to stand up, but a quick movement over head stopped him dead in his tracks. He fell backward and covered his mouth, sliding as far under the boulder as he could go. He stared as more and more of the white insectoid monsters darted across the boulder above him and continued on a fast pace to the south.

They had on them all, four terrible sickle like legs, set up like a scorpion's legs might be, with several moving joints in each. They were quiet and fluid as they ran past, their bodies were odd shaped to say the least. The best way he could think of to describe their shape was that of a smooth pyramid, with a bent back top that ended in an aerodynamic curve. A bit like pictures of old world sea creatures, they defied any real geometric description. In fact, the bodies resembled in many ways a squid, Malloy had seen a preserved one once in the Vault that he had grown up in. The under belly of the white things had four smaller folded up legs underneath, with a red glowing light in the center. There were more red glowing lights on the bodies as well, six in all, the smallest at the front facing direction, and the largest at the posterior. Just above those lights, were the most terrifying aspect of the crawling menaces.

Four indepently moving and wiggling metallic tendrils were attached to the mid section of each and every one of the creature's bodies. They whipped around and moved about in the air in front of the advancing things like some sort of long thin worms, the movement was unnatural and creepy to witness. At the top of the body was the strange curved pyramid top, with four giant shining red lights on every direction. The heads swiveled back and forth as the creatures ran forward, towards the settlement of Nicksta. One last white squid like thing hopped over the boulder and then bent down towards Malloy. He screamed out and the thing grabbed him around his waist and shoulders by way of it's metallic tendrils. It pulled him from the boulder with ease, and stood him up on the ground feet first, right in front of it.

"Are you okay? Do you need assistance?" Came a kind enough sounding voice from within the creature. Malloy was frozen in fear, and he was unable to speak. He looked at the creature's body and saw markings near it's underbody. The markings were in english, and they were clearly defined. The markings read 'DEET 76'. The machine waited patiently for a reply and then finally let go of Malloy with it's tendrils. "Catalog entry- mentally disabled. Inability to speak." Said the voice, as the machine backed away from Malloy.

Malloy's reflection bounced back at him through the red glowing lights of the body and the head of the machine. It's outer hull was seamless, and almost looked organic, but Malloy new better. The tendrils of the machine quickly wrapped back around themselves, covering the body of the seven foot tall white android. The android shook and made a terrible series of noises, Malloy backed up, unable to run but also unwilling to stand without taking some kind of defensive stance. The noises stopped, and the machine sent one singular tendril out towards him. It placed a shining bit of rectangular foil in his closest hand, and then with the same tendril, picked up the empty cigarette pack and dropped it back into Malloy's shirt pocket. It made a happy enough sounding beeping set of tones and then promptly turned it's body to continue onwards with the other machines.

Malloy stood in the dust, and watched as the androids quickly disappeared behind some hills and he was alone again. Malloy looked down at the piece of foil in his hand. It had on it an intricate design, and it shined in the sun with all the colors of the spectrum. Shapes had been punched out of the foil, and he held the rectangle up to the sky to inspect it further.

The shapes that had been punched out of the foil formed words. Malloy brought the foil back down and read the message that had been left to him. The large friendly words read out, 'Don't be a litter bug!~ Have a nice day.' Malloy blinked and read the foil over and over again, he was unable to accept that what had just happened was reality. The ten menacing androids ran onward, and he decided to follow after them. Scientific curiosity had won over his fear, and he went racing in the direction they had gone. He waved the foil above his head and shouted out.

"Wait! Hold on!" He yelled as he went running.

* * *

Victoria placed some discarded bits of clothing on Randall, and carefully picked him up into her arms. He gasped out as she touched his burnt and shiny skin on his back and his shoulders. The bottoms of his feet were cooked through too, from his shins up to his belly button, where the band of his burnt boxer shorts had seemingly partially melted to his skin in a few places. Victoria surveyed the damage that had been dealt to him, and she had decided that he would need immediate medical intervention to survive the next 24 hours. She took him over to a junked out corvega nearby and gently placed him in the back seat of the car. Randall winced and huffed out as the leather interior hit his back.

"You should just try to rest in here, I'll be back with some help soon." Said Victoria, as she laid him down. Randall stared at the girl in front of him, his chest heaving with labored breaths. Outside, in the distance, they both heard the raiders howl out and start cheering again. Randall turned his focus to Victoria's hands and he grabbed out to one of them. "Just rest!" Demanded Victoria.

"Thank you." He choked out, as Victoria pulled her hand back from his grasp. Her palm had been seared through, it had bubbled and separated, and inside her hand had been a flash of silver and white colors. Randall shook his head and pushed himself away from her on his elbows. "Goddamn, but you're strong." He said, pointing to her hands. Victoria looked at her palms and then back to Randall. She put her palms in her lap and backed away from Randall on the seat.

"I can explain that." Began Victoria. Randall continued to point at her palms.

"I'm not stupid. I've seen a guy with a robot arm before!" He exclaimed out, as a shot of pain ripped through his legs. He huffed out and patted his thighs until the pain stopped, and then looked back to the girl's lap. "His was big. Looked like it weighed a ton, and it didn't even do much but open it's hand at that. He said that they can do stuff like that out towards New Vegas. Is that where you're really from? Is it just your arms and legs?" He asked, as he weakly lifted his head up to see her. Victoria frowned a little. She held her palms up for him to see, the melted and indented polymers had given way to the metals underneath that made up her endoskeleton. Randall started heaving again, his heart beat very fast in his chest.

"It's more than that." She said to him. She dropped her hands back down. "I really do come from Cedar Rapids." Victoria added. Randall flinched as another tremor of pain entered his back.

"How much more?" He finally asked. Victoria climbed over on top of Randall, making sure not to touch his burnt areas. She took one of his hands into her own and then brought his palm to her chest. The lack of a heartbeat made Randall recoil a little bit, and he stared up to her face. Victoria looked around the rusted out old machine and found a sharp jagged piece of metal in the back dash of the car. She took the old piece of metal and brought it up to her temple. "Wait-" Randall started to say. Victoria slammed the metal into her head as hard she could, and it bent and snapped as soon as it's tip hit her metal skull. Randall shook his head and squirmed underneath of her, trying to get away from Victoria as politely as possible. His face was white and his breathing hastened.

"Are you going to throw up again?" Asked Victoria, as she scrunched up her mouth to the side. Randall pushed himself all the way to the opposite door of the car, away from Victoria and he sat up against the window, making a face of panic and pain as he did so. The two sat in the car in an uneasy silence for what seemed like minutes. Randall unsure of just what the hell was in front of him, and Victoria confused as to how Randall could laugh about a fork being stuck in his ribs one minute, and then how he could be upset with her the next. Victoria tossed the bent metal fragment to the side and then backed out of the car door, leaving Randall alone. "I'll bring back help." She said, her monotone voice trailing off just a little.

Victoria turned and left the corvega, heading towards the raider encampment. Her memory nagged at her as she walked the short distance to the junkyard, files upon files of her past life encroached upon her current directives and tasks, and she denied every application that would run them. She faced an uphill battle, and there was no time for remembering the past. The boy that every single one of those files would undoubtedly mention, was long dead, but the people in the box cars, and the man in the corvega still lived. This was their time now. She set her task manager to block all recollection on the matter and then entered into the junkyard.

Victoria scanned the area and marked the location of every raider. She stood back behind an old derelict bulldozer and watched as the raiders lined up by the back of the makeshift walls, constructed of car stacks. They were all eating the roasted remains of a human being, there were several more human bodies on spits nearby. The raiders were making merry, talking among themselves and laughing. Forty-six raiders in all were spread throughout the junkyard, far too many for her to attempt to engage. Victoria would be difficult to destroy, but nothing that was grown or manufactured was indestructible, especially where human ingenuity and violence were concerned. She was no match for them without a gun, and although she could overpower them physically in smaller groups, taking on nearly four dozen of them would not be a wise strategy.

She really only needed to gain access to her tablet device, to call in her waiting androids. It would really only take a few to dispatch the raiders, but ten androids would definitely get the job done. Still, as Victoria peaked around the bulldozer to the box cars full of frightened people, she worried about introducing them too soon, and in such a bloody fashion. Victoria looked like a nice enough young girl, yet Randall's reaction to her had been less than amiable. Her androids didn't have aesthetic value in mind within their design at all, and she calculated that the reaction of the wastelanders would be even worse than that of Randall's.

Yet there was precious little choice now. There was very little else to consider. Her attention snapped away from the junkyard and off into the distance. Her sensors picked up movement out in the wasteland, and she zoomed in on the three individuals that were sauntering towards the raider encampment. Three men in rather sturdy looking leather armor, each carrying assault rifles and pistols with them were making their way to the junkyard, and they had with them multiple devices that looked like large collars. These men were likely the purchasers of human slaves, the very same that Burner had been waiting for.

Victoria took off in their direction, making sure to stay out of sight from the raiders. She grabbed an old and sharp hub cap that was laying on top of a car hood as she went and then started running at full speed towards the men. Victoria raced at them at over forty miles per hour, with the hub cap in hand. Within just a minute of time, the three men had noticed her and all stopped. Dumbfounded by the speed of the child that was running up to them.

"What in the h-" Began one man. Victoria brought the hub cap back behind her shoulder and then released it in front of her with a snapping motion of her arm. The hub cap flew through the air like a high speed buzz saw, and it landed in the head of the first man. It stopped him mid-sentence, as his head was nearly split in two by the metal disc. It entered just above his mouth, and it ripped his skull backward. The top of his head hung by the flesh of his scalp and the muscle at the back of his head, dangling there horrifically as the body of the man flopped over sideways onto the ground.

Before the two other men could even react, Victoria was upon them. She jumped up to the closest of the two remaining men and grabbed him by his neck, bringing him down to the ground upon her knee. The man's neck hit her leg, and it broke with a loud snap. She dropped the limp body to the ground and turned to the last one standing. The man fumbled over his assault rifle and tripped on his own feet as he ran away from Victoria in a panic.

He raised his rifle up just as Victoria snatched it out of his hands. She checked the rifle, and then turned it on him.

"No! Wait! I-" Shouted the man. Victoria pulled the trigger on the gun and shot the man in his right eye. He fell back silent and bleeding out from his head. The rifle was acceptable, but not made in America. It left a sour taste in her mouth, seeing the Chinese made gun in her hands, but it would have to do. Victoria gathered the three other rifles from the bodies and all of the ammunition that they had on them. She had Eighty rounds in all, more than enough for the raiders. She sat down on the ground, surrounded by the three dead men and made sure that all the rifles had full magazines. She also leaned over to the mostly headless man and went through his pockets, looking for any identification. She couldn't find any, and so she stood up with a fully loaded rifle in each hand, and one additional one strapped to her back.

She went running again towards the junkyard, kicking up dust behind her as she raced along the wasteland. As she came to the makeshift walls, one singular raider came strolling out of the encampment, with his gun out- apparently to investigate the round that Victoria had just fired. The pink mohawked man looked to his right at first and then to his left where he saw her just in time to get his pistol raised up to his shoulder.

"What the fuck!?" Exclaimed the man, as he raised the pistol up. Victoria shot off a small burst of two rounds into the man's face, and he dropped backward into the dirt. She came running around the corner of the walls and began tracking the remaining forty-five targets. Still running at her top speed, she started firing into the crowd of surprised raiders. Two more rounds, then two more after that, and then three- all of which found their targets. Three more raiders had fallen before anyone could even get their guns up. Burner stood up from his cooking and pointed to Victoria.

"Well I'll be damned!" He said, as he stepped away from a human body roasting over a spit. Victoria recognized the body immediately, and she frowned. Burner grabbed his flamer and threw it over his shoulder. "Somebody forget to lock the goddamned door or what?!" He shouted at his raiders. Victoria continued her assault and took cover inside one of the stacks of cars.

She fired off her assault rifles into the crowd and dropped two more raiders, before they all opened fire on her. Victoria was small enough to fit in between the old burnt out cars. She hid inside the stacks, darting left and right before emerging again from a stack on the opposite wall. She plugged another raider in the back of her head, and the woman fell forward, with her brain matter spilling out over a disgusted small cluster of other raiders. They didn't hesitate to fire on her position, and Burner set the stack ablaze with his flamer. Victoria retreated to the outside and quickly climbed up the outside of the wall, taking a few rounds to her chest and legs as she went up.

She reached the top and surveyed the damage to her body. Her endoskeleton was mostly unaffected by the shots, but her left leg had lost just a small amount of hydraulic pressure. The raiders concentrated their fire upwards to the car stack that she was on, and some began to climb up the opposite walls to get a better vantage point on her. She rolled down to the hood of the top most car of the stack and into the broken out window of it. Then she went to the window and fired back down to the raiders below. Her shots landed on one more raider and he fell to the ground. She blasted one more down from his climb on the opposite wall, killing him with the fall, before Burner shot his flames into the car. Victoria smashed through the other side of the car, with her right arm and dress on fire.

She put out the flames as quickly as she could and then shot at the rivets on the top most car of the stack, releasing it from it's binding with the other old automobiles. Then with all of her might, she pushed on the hollowed out old car, moving it off of the stack. The car tumbled over and landed on one of the raiders that had taken to climbing the stack that she was on. He landed with the car on top of him, his head turned to a jelly.

"Holy fuck!" Yelled one of the men as all of the raiders started firing up at the old cars in all directions. They spread out and more of them began to climb the stacks. One of the unfortunate men looked into one of the cars that he was climbing up, just in time to see the large broken windshield in Victoria's hand come up to his face. The top of his head separated from the man's lower jaw, and his spurting corpse fell backward onto the ground far below.

Victoria fired her last rounds from one of her rifles down at the raiders, as the raiders concentrated their fire on the car that the mostly headless raider had fallen from. The other gun had jammed from poor condition, and Victoria dropped them both to the car floor. She brought her last assault rifle around made sure it was secure before she exited out of the front window.

One of the raiders on top of the stacks went running over towards the car, and aimed his gun downward off of the side of the wall. He spotted Victoria climbing between the cars on all fours, her back towards him and her limbs bent and animated at unnatural angles. He screamed at the disturbing sight, and then completely lost his nerve when she turned her head around to face him, her neck twisted and contorted in a way that he just couldn't deal with, and he ran.

The raider with the spikey hairdo went sprinting across the stacks, dropping his gun to the ground far away from him and pushing past his fellow gunmen, the raider didn't stop until he hit a ladder leading down. He missed a few rungs and hurt himself in the descent, but seemed determined to get away from stacks. The other raiders shouted at him.

"Doug! What the shit are you doing?!" Asked one of the raiders. The gunfire had quieted down, as the raiders searched for the young girl. Doug didn't answer, he hopped off of the ladder and went running into the safety of the wasteland, somewhere towards the north. The two raiders stood side by side and watched their former cohort disappear behind some rocks. "What a goddamned coward!" Said the raider, as he scowled.

Then there came the sound of metal being punched through, and the raider felt his ankles being clenched by two very powerful hands. He screamed out as he was pulled downward at incredible speed, his trigger finger squeezed out his remaining ammo right into his friend's head as the searing pain shot through his legs all the way up into his stomach. The raider beside him dropped to the hood of the old car on which they had been standing, and slid off onto the ground far beneath them. The raider tried to scream but was cut off, literally, when his legs were pulled backward into the sharp metal edges of the car's roof. His torso tumbled forward off of the car, and he wildly grabbed out to the air, trying to catch himself, but the raider fell to the ground with a wet splatting noise.

The violence and carnage was too much for another one of the raiders, and she too went fleeing away from the stacks of cars, only to have one well placed round hit her squarely in between her shoulders. The woman fell forward and began to kick herself forward with as much leg strength as she had left, but to little avail. Victoria watched the raider try to crawl away and then returned her attention to the 31 remaining targets. More flames went sailing into the car stacks all around her, and more raiders were taking aim at her general location. A good number of them had taken cover behind the burnt out cars of the old world, and Burner himself hid behind the makeshift stage that they had made for the sell and purchase of human beings.

The gunshots soon tapered off and she could hear yelling and shouting down below in the junkyard. The sound of a metal door being opened caught her attention, and Victoria peered over the rusted out door of the junked out car that she was in. Burner shoved a football armored man down in front of him and put his flame thrower to the back of the man's head.

"You Enclave bitches are crazy!" Yelled out Burner, in an almost admiring tone. He clicked his flame thrower on and the armored man began screaming. "I tell you what! You throw that gun out, and I won't burn the next one!" Said Burner, just as he pulled his trigger and set the man in front of him ablaze. The man didn't even have time to scream, as his upper half completely turned to ashes and bones. Another raider threw a young child out to Burner from the old rail box car, and Burner caught him under his jaw.

"Okay." Said Victoria, loudly enough so that all of the raiders could hear her. She tossed the gun out of the window without a moment's hesitation and quickly climbed out of the car and onto the top of it's roof. Burner looked up at her and then ruffled the hair of the young boy that he held captive.

"I can't believe you were actually that stupid!" He yelled up to Victoria, as a raider went running into the open to fetch the discarded weapon. The raider inspected the gun and then went running to Burner.

"Shit! It's the slaver's guns!" He said to Burner, as he showed the gun to him. Burner scoffed out and looked back up at Victoria. He squinted from the midday sun and took in her figure as much as he could. There was more to her than met the eyes, and Burner began to wonder over how the child that was not even older than the boy in his arm stood so defiantly and calmly on the stacks above him.

"Who the hell are you?!" Shouted Burner, as he threw the boy down to the ground in front of him. The raider trained the slaver's rifle on the boy, who just balled up into a fetal position with his hands over his head. Victoria slowly began to walk across the stacks of cars, closer towards Burner. The remaining raiders all came out of hiding and cover to raise their various firearms up at her as she went. The loud clanking of the footsteps on the car tops was eerie and rhtyhmic. She stopped and finally answered the man.

"I am Victoria." She said plainly. Then she pointed down to Burner. "Burner. For your crimes against humanity and for the conspiracy to buy and sell human beings, I am sentencing you to the maximum extents of the law." She yelled down to them all. The raiders erupted into laughter. Burner put his foot on the boy's head, as if it were just a rock to rest his foot on.

"What law is that?" He yelled back up to her. Victoria continued walking across the stacks.

"The law that all citizens of the United States will now adhere to." She said back down to them all. "Surrender to me now, and I can guarantee you and all of your cohorts a speedy and fair sentencing." The people in the box cars began to peek out at the raiders and the showdown that was taking place above them. Burner laughed out and turned his flame thrower on again.

"Goddamned crazy clavies." He said to himself as he raised the flame thrower up towards Victoria. "Alright! It was nice meeting you, Victor!" Yelled out Burner as he pulled the trigger on his gun. The flames erupted forth from the nozzle of his flame thrower and went soaring up to Victoria. The boy screamed out and squirmed underneath of Burner's well worn boot. The raiders too opened up fire on the stack of cars, towards the little figure that had been standing on the top. The shots finally stopped and Burner gave his flames a rest. The burnt up leg of the girl on the top of the stacks hung off a car hood, and Burner motioned for one of his raiders to go fetch the fallen nuisance.

"I'll get her!" Said the female raider, the same one that had taken Victoria's backpack some time earlier in the day. She climbed up the stacks of cars and whooped out with joy when she reached the top. "Charcoal!" She shouted back down to the raiders in the junk yard. A cheer went through the ghastly crowd and they fired off a few more rounds into the air.

"Looks like there's desert after all!" Yelled out Burner, as he motioned with his hands to the raider on top of the stack. She nodded and rolled the darkened body of the girl off of the hood and watched with delight as she hit the ground below with a satisfying thud. Burner let the boy underneath of his boot up, and then immediately threw him down to the body of the little girl in question. The boy panicked and skittered away from the inhuman burned out thing in front of him, to the laughs of the raiders. "That's one hot tamale, huh?" Asked Burner to the boy, as he kicked the boy back towards the box car.

"Smells weird." Said one of the raiders, as he grabbed an ankle and began to drag the little body towards the stage. Burner sniffed the air and shrugged. The unusual scent was foreign to him, for a moment, and then the memory of an incident hit him. Plastic. The same smell had once hung around the air after Burner had put down a Mr. Handy. He snapped his attention back to the burnt body of Victoria just as the raider went to rip off the remaining bits of clothing that had not been incinerated. "Man Burner, I don't think she's any good..." Said the raider.

"Wait!" Shouted Burner, as he turned his flame thrower on again. The eyes of the young girl opened up and her hand went up to the neck of the raider that leaned over her. A sickening albeit short scream left the raider's mouth as the mechanical thing ripped out the man's throat. It sat up and looked at Burner, with one eye still looking quite human, and the other... the other was nothing short of nightmarish. The red light shone directly into Burner's eyes and he fumbled with the flame thrower, stepping away from the thing as it let go of the dead raider from it's grip. Shots rang out as the remaining 29 other raiders fired upon Victoria's reanimated corpse. It quickly rolled away from the gunfire and went sliding across the stage to the weird tablet that Burner had discarded earlier. The android pressed a series of buttons on the tablet and then stood up to look at it's attackers head on. Now the truth of the situation was revealed.

"I didn't want to cause you any undue pain or discomfort." Said the android in the middle of the stage. "I'm sorry that this had to happen." She said.

Victoria stood upon the stage, with her burnt flesh falling away in some places, and in those places her shining and metallic endoskeleton could be seen. Some of the raiders stopped firing, either in awe or in mass confusion. Her face had melted slightly at her mouth and her right side, and in a freakish display, Victoria gripped her face and pulled the charred flesh off of her jaws and right side of her face. The metallic skull beneath the flesh was solid, shining and cold.

The raiders stood in silence and contemplation for what seemed like minutes. An eerie wind howled through the stacks of the burnt out cars of the junkyard, and Victoria turned her attention again to Burner. Screams erupted from the box cars and from the raiders alike, some of the raiders dropped their weapons and they began to run away from the junkyard. The first of the raiders reached the entrance to the makeshift entrance and screamed out again. His fellow raiders followed close behind him, and they too stopped and shouted out in fear and panic.

Four white, horrible looking monstrosities stood at the entrance, all of them with horrid looking metal tentacles and sharp scorpion like legs. The first raider turned back around just as one of the white mechanical beasts blasted him with a beam from one of it's many red lights that surrounded it's 'body'. The raider evaporated into a thin matrix of white and red smoke. The death was clean, and environmentally sound.

"Hello.~ Please line up in an orderly fashion for sentencing." Came a rather pleasent sounding voice from one of the scorpion like monsters. The raiders all began to scream and run away, but to no avail. The four creatures blasted the other eight retreating targets with extreme efficiency. Burner and the remaining 21 raiders all began to fire at the four mechanical beasts, but they all quickly turned their attention to the tops of the stacks. Six more of the fiends had climbed the stacks around them, and withing seconds the 21 other raiders were gone. The junkyard went silent until the ten white mechanical beasts announced their success in unison. "Sentencing complete!~" Their tone was jolly, like that of an old english butler. They all next moved onto the box cars that held the human captives and began to release the locks.

Victoria made her way down the stage and towards Burner, who shrank away from her. She turned to one of the strange androids next to her and pointed in the direction of Randall's position. The wordless exchange took place, and the android went rushing off to it's apportioned task. Burner stepped back from Victoria as dozens of screaming wastelanders went running past them both. He fell backward and scrambled away from her all the way to wall of one of the box cars. She bent down to him and then looked to her left, placing a finger on right cheek. Burner shook violently and shut his eyes tight.

"Look at what you did to me." Demanded Victoria, with her unmoved and monotone voice. The voice resonated strangely, metallic and distant, but still hers. Burner slowly opened up his eyes and watched in surprise and slight horror as strange green and red strips of lights ran across her face. Thin piece by thin piece, her face was returning to her metallic skull. The burnt flesh around her neck also began to change back to normal. Victoria faced him again and then slowly waved her finger in front of Burner's face, as if he were a child to be scolded. "You will not stop me." She said finally, as she picked him up the waist.

"Gah!-" Burner gasped out, as the little android lifted him straight into the air. He hung over her with a look of helpless fear in his eyes, and didn't dare struggle as she began to walk him over to the stage. She gently placed him down and then held her hand out to her side. One of the white androids placed Burner's discarded flame thrower in her hand. She turned the flame thrower on and pointed it at Burner's legs. He began screaming and the white android shot it's tentacles out towards him, restraining him to the spot.

"Burner. It is the supreme law of the land that the punishment shall fit the crime. You will choose a limb, I will cook it, and then you will eat it." Said Victoria, as he struggled and began to cry out. "Choose." She reiterated to him. Burner shook his head violently and then tried to wriggle free.

"NO!" He yelled out. Victoria turned the flamer to Burner's right leg and began to slowly roast it. The screams of Burner filled the junkyard, and the remaining captives fled quickly from the stacks. The screaming went on for some minutes, until finally Victoria let up on the flames, and another android finished the job. It surgically removed and then brought the leg up to Burner's mouth, while forcing his mouth open with it's tentacles. Victoria left the stage, listening to the muffled screams and sudden forced chewing of the raider as she went. The box cars were emptied of the terrified people now, there were no stragglers. She went up to one of her androids and patted it's chassis.

"Strip the nervous system, retain the brain. Full access." Said Victoria to the android. It made a beeping noise and left for the screaming raider. She continued on her way to the corvega that she had left Randall in, where he was shouting and yelling at one of her androids. It worked around his kicks and disruptive wriggling, wrapping his legs up in an oddly colored foil. "Calm down." Said Victoria, as she climbed into the burnt out corvega.

"What the hell!" Yelled Randall. He pointed to the white android as it pulled away from him and stepped away. "What the hell!" He shouted again. Victoria spun around to face him from the front seat of the car, just as it was lifted into the air by the android's tentacles.

"Calm down. These are my friends from Cedar Rapids." Said Victoria in a matter of fact sort of way. Randall stared at her with wide eyes, and Victoria faced the rearview mirror to take a look at herself. Her shiny endoskeleton peeked through her face, and a great deal of her was still charred. Her right eye still shone a brilliant red light. "I ran into trouble." She stated, as the car lurched forward.

"No shit." Said Randall, as he gripped the seat of the now moving vehicle.

* * *

Somewhere on a ridge, far north of the now quiet junkyard, Malloy lowered his binoculars and breathed out. In the distance, he could see the android carrying the old car off into the distance towards Nicksta, and he watched as the final surviving raider crawled away, in pain and bleeding from the wound in her back. One of the androids, the DEET, casually walked over to her and evaporated her as it walked past. He scurried off of the ridge and started making his way away from the scene. Anywhere would be better than that newly abandoned place now.


End file.
